[May 18, 2015]

Akanda and NGINX Partner to Provide Load-Balancing-as-a-Service for OpenStack Environments

Akanda, the only open source network virtualization solution built for OpenStack environments, and NGINX, Inc., today announced a partnership to provide simplified, enterprise grade Load-Balancing-as-a-Service (LBaaS) for OpenStack environments. Integrating Akanda's lifecycle management tools and L2 agnostic platform with NGINX Plus, a high-performance load balancer and application delivery solution, developers are now able to drive load balancing requests and select their preference of back-end technology, without fear of integration complexities.

Built upon NGINX, the leading open source solution adopted by the busiest websites to deliver their most critical applications and content, NGINX Plus provides a modern software defined approach to load balancing and application delivery compared to legacy solutions. NGINX Plus' advanced features include HTTP and TCP (Layer 7 and Layer 4) load balancing, SSL offload and high availability, along with support for technology such as Docker containers, providing maximum scalability and choice. Public and private cloud operators can easily deploy and manage a LBaaS solution in less time, and with less upfront and operating costs, without investing in costly infrastructure or hardware based load balancing appliances.

"Delivering critical business applications and content on time, and without issues, to all its users is the end goal of today's modern IT organization," said Paul Oh, head of business development at NGINX. "OpenStack operators can now deploy a LBaaS solution using NGINX Plus, delivering advanced features and capabilities to their customers while reducing implementation and integration time with Akanda's network virtualization solution."

Akanda is revolutionizing the network virtualization industry, delivering the first open source production-ready platform for network services virtualization. Acting as an orchestrtion platform, Akanda provides routing, load balancing and firewalls, while centrally managing critical functions of health monitoring, event processing and all interactions within the OpenStack Neutron API. NGINX Plus adds enterprise-ready features to deliver, scale and manage applications, giving developers the freedom needed to innovate without being constrained by infrastructure. By partnering together, Akanda and NGINX will deliver the most comprehensive Neutron LBaas v2 solution on the market.

"Akanda is passionate about transforming how enterprises assess and tackle networking," said Mark McClain, CTO of Akanda. "By partnering with NGINX, we are providing a well-rounded joint solution that combines our sophisticated lifecycle management and orchestration platform with a top of the line load balancer and application accelerator. We're thrilled to provide developers with the options needed to continue a swift pace of innovation."

"Combining the flexibility of Akanda's virtual network services orchestration with the proven capabilities of NGINX Plus will enable DreamHost to deliver top-notch load balancing services in our DreamCompute OpenStack cloud," said Jonathan LaCour, VP of Cloud and Development at DreamHost. "When we realized existing approaches to load balancing in OpenStack were largely based upon proprietary, legacy platforms, we knew that there had to be a better way. NGINX's open source history, and proven track record of software load balancing, made it a perfect match for Akanda's tight integration with OpenStack networking."

Supporting Resources

• Company Blog: http://akanda.io/blog/
• Twitter (News - Alert): https://twitter.com/akandaio
• Facebook (News - Alert): https://www.facebook.com/akanda.io
• LinkedIn (News - Alert): https://www.linkedin.com/company/akanda-inc

About Nginx, Inc.

NGINX powers applications and content for the modern Internet experience. The company offers award-winning and industry-leading high performance web application technology that delivers the scalability, speed, and security to more than 130 million sites on the Internet, ensuring a seamless web user experience. Companies rely on NGINX technologies for load balancing, content caching, media streaming, web serving and more. More than 40 percent of the Internet's largest websites rely on NGINX to drive the performance of their web applications including several giants such as Netflix, Pinterest, Airbnb, Box (News - Alert), Instagram, SoundCloud, Zappos, and more. The company is headquartered in San Francisco.

About Akanda, Inc.

Akanda, Inc. is the major developer and supporter of the open source Akanda network virtualization software project. Akanda's networking platform for OpenStack clouds is changing the future of networking by delivering an open, extensible and cost effective platform for enterprises and service providers to virtualize their networks. Akanda is layer 2 agnostic and powers network virtualization for DreamCompute, the OpenStack-based public cloud offered by DreamHost. Akanda interfaces with the OpenStack Neutron REST APIs and includes a sophisticated management and orchestration platform to monitor, configure, and manage 3rd party virtualized routers, load balancers and firewalls. For more information, visit www.akanda.io.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150518005308/en/

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