F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that it has won the Datacenter Leaders Award for Innovation in IT Optimisation. The award recognised F5 for its work with hosting and cloud computing leader Rackspace to create its innovative RackConnect™ Hybrid Cloud hosting service.

Nathan Pearce, EMEA Product Manager at F5 Networks, commented: “Everyone at F5 is extremely proud to have played a part in helping Rackspace take a new service to market. Using the Rackspace RackConnect service, businesses can dynamically direct data to either cloud-based or dedicated resources, and add capacity quickly in cloud as needed.”

Amongst other devices, the hybrid service from Rackspace can use F5’s BIG-IP^® Local Traffic Manager™ or a firewall service from another vendor to give Rackspace customers the opportunity to use both dedicated and cloud hosting services. Rackspace then provides the option to connect the two environments over the company’s own network, pushing data to either cloud or dedicated environments as needed by specific application use cases.

Pearce added: “This award is recognition of our ongoing work to help improve business functions for our customers. In such a competitive IT market place, a ‘one-size fits all’ solution simply will not work, so we are glad to have worked with Rackspace to offer a solution to its customers which allows them to mix both cloud and dedicated resources in an optimal fashion.”

Simon Abrahams, Head of Product Marketing, EMEA at Rackspace, commented: “Through the intelligent use of F5’s technology we have been able to use existing equipment to deploy a new offering to our customers within a very short time period. With our established track record in taking customers to cloud services quickly and fluidly, F5 has now joined our portfolio to help give our customers a head start on their journey to the cloud.”

The Datacenter Leader Awards recognises innovation, leadership and ‘out of the box’ thinking across the Datacenter industry. Now in its fifth year, it serves to celebrate and identify Datacenter projects of all sizes across all sectors of the U.K. and Europe.