We are using F5 BIG-IP AFM because it has more stability and supports for devices, and provides a lot of online support materials, such as videos, for engineers for troubleshooting.

We did look at different options. At the time we were looking at it, this was the only one that was able to perform at the level of performance required.

There are competing solutions in the market. In terms of what F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) offers, from the load balancing point of view, I think they are one of the best. When it comes to firewalls and other solutions, there are better ones, such as FortiGate, Cisco, or Huawei. As a firewall, they are not the best. However, for load balancing, they're the best.

We didn't really evaluate other options. They were the top one at the time, so we decided to go for that.

We have evaluated and also recommend other solutions when the client does not have the budget to go with F5. For example, we used some Cisco solutions which are also expensive but they are not as versatile and easy to deploy and manage.