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F5 is a market leader in the application delivery controller market. The company sells products for security, application performance, and automation. Its three customer verticals are enterprises, service providers, and government entities. Revenue is evenly split between its services business and products business with revenue trending toward products due to software adoption. The Seattle-based firm was incorporated in 1996, and went public in 1999.

Microsoft develops and licenses consumer and enterprise software. It is known for its Windows operating systems and Office productivity suite. The company is organized into three equally sized broad segments: productivity and business processes (legacy Microsoft Office, cloud-based Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Skype, LinkedIn, Dynamics), intelligence cloud (infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service offerings Azure, Windows Server OS, SQL Server), and more personal computing (Windows Client, Xbox, Bing search, display advertising, and Surface laptops, tablets, and desktops).