Good afternoon and welcome to F5's call to discuss the acquisition of Volterra. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Also, today's conference is being recorded. If anyone has any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'll now turn the call over to Ms. Suzanne DuLong. Ma'am, you may begin.
Hello and welcome. I'm Suzanne DuLong, F5's Vice President of Investor Relations. Thanks for joining us. Today, we will be discussing F5's acquisition of Volterra, as well as our Preliminary Q1 Fiscal Year 2021 Financial Result. François Locoh-Donou, F5's President and CEO, will be making prepared remarks on today's call. Other members of the F5 executive team are also on hand to answer questions during the Q&A session.
A copy of today's press release and the webcast link are available on our website at f5.com, or an archived version of today's call will also be available. Today's live discussion is accompanied by slides which are viewable on the webcast. We'll also post the slides to our IR site at the conclusion of today's discussion. The replay of today's call will be available through midnight Pacific time, January 8 , by dialing 800-585-8367 or 416-621-4642.
Please use meeting ID 887-9455. For additional information or follow-up questions, please reach out to me directly at s.dulong@f5.com. Our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements. These include words such as believe, anticipate, expect, and target. These forward-looking statements involve uncertainties and risks that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements.
Factors that may affect our results are summarized in the press release announcing our financial results and described in detail in our SEC filings. During our presentation, we will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures. We will provide a complete GAAP and non-GAAP reconciliation when we report our final fiscal Q1 results on January 26, 2021. Please note that F5 has no duty to update any information presented in this call. With that, I will turn the call over to François.
Thanks, Suzanne. We are very excited to share several pieces of news with you today, including our first look at our fiscal Q1 results and our acquisition of Volterra. I will spend the majority of today's call on Volterra and how an F5-Volterra combination significantly enhances F5's competitive position and leapfrogs current Edge solutions . We are able to make this move based on the success of our transformation to date, so let me start with our preliminary Q1 results, which continue to show strong momentum in the business.
As you have likely seen in the press release, we expect to deliver a very strong Q1. We expect revenue growth of approximately 10%, with non-GAAP revenue between $623 million to $626 million. This is above the top end of our guidance of $595 million to $615 million. The success of our software offerings continues to fuel our growth.
We expect software revenue growth of approximately 70%, which is above our guidance of at least 50% growth. This includes strong organic growth, which we expect to be approximately 35%, excluding Shape. Rounding up the top-line contributors, our systems business is proving resilient, delivering revenue growth at or around 5%. We expect global services revenue that is slightly better than flat compared to the year-ago period. Finally, we expect Q1 2021 non-GAAP EPS above the top end of our prior range of $2.26 to $2.38.
As Suzanne noted, we expect to report our complete Q1 results on January 26, and we look forward to providing additional detail at that time. As excited as I am to talk to you about Q1, I am more excited to speak to you about our acquisition of Volterra. This transaction fundamentally changes the game at the Edge and unlocks tremendous potential for F5.
Before we discuss in more detail how the combination of F5 and Volterra leapfrogs current-Edge technologies and creates an Edge 2.0 platform for enterprises and service providers, I will review a few key transaction details. We have paid approximately $440 million in cash and approximately $60 million in deferred consideration and assumed unvested instantiate compensation to founders and employees.
We financed the deal with balance sheet cash. We expect Volterra to accelerate our Horizon 2 and long-term revenue growth, and we have updated the revenue outlook we provided at our November Analyst and Investor Meeting to reflect this revenue acceleration. We now expect Horizon 2 revenue growth of 7-8% CAGR, up from 6-7% previously. Longer term, we now expect double-digit revenue growth, up from 8%-9% previously.
Just as importantly, there are no changes to the Horizon 2 non-GAAP operating margin or EPS growth targets we provided at our Analyst Day. And we are reiterating our commitment to repurchase $1 billion in shares over the next two years, including $500 million via an accelerated share repurchase in fiscal year 2021. We expect the deal will close in calendar Q1 2021.
Following this deal, we do not expect to do further sizable M&A activity, which would assign us deals greater than $100 million, at least until Volterra is substantially integrated. We expect integration will take at least 12 to 18 months. Many of you know F5 and our pedigree, but may not be familiar with Volterra. Well, let me introduce you. Volterra brings to F5 a globally distributed application Edge platform with unlimited scale.
The company emerged from sales mode about 14 months ago and is led by their founders, CEO Ankur Singla, and Harshad Nakil, who is now their CTO. They are early-staged and backed by leading technology investors. They have an incredibly talented team of roughly 125 employees, more than 75% of whom are senior-level engineers. Despite their early stage, the power of Volterra's technology platform has already secured 50 plus complex customers, including three of the top 15 telcos globally.
As we will explain today, combining F5's incredible reach, including a scaled platform of 18,000 global enterprise customers that enables 450 million apps and websites and delivers leading security solutions, the Volterra technology platform accelerates the entirety of the F5 portfolio. Near term, the combination with Volterra is immediately additive to our financial performance. It allows F5 to bring application security to our 18,000 customers worldwide as a service.
That means F5 can now extend its world-class application security to the Edge, making it much easier to consume via a SaaS model. Volterra meets the clear M&A criteria we laid out at our Analyst and Investor Meeting. In Horizon 2, we expect it will accelerate our revenue growth. At the same time, we are maintaining our Horizon 2 operating margin targets and our commitment to achieving double-digit EPS growth, as well as driving to the Rule of 40.
We also remain fully committed to our previously discussed $1 billion in share repurchases, including a $500 million accelerated share repurchase in fiscal year 2021. But I want to be clear: we are not acquiring Volterra for what it can do for us short-term. In fact, we expect less than $10 million in revenue contribution this fiscal year. The real power of this combination is how it transforms our competitive position.
First, we are massively extending our reach and position in application security, the fastest-growing segment of our $28 billion 2023 plan. Second, it substantially enhances our competitive position in Edge via the fastest-growing segment of the market with the next-generation offering that we are calling Edge 2.0, and finally, it creates a unique platform as a service Edge computing platform. Going forward, you will see the benefit of Volterra in the growth of our software, application security, and SaaS solutions.
Let's shift now to talk about the Edge and how, with Volterra, we will redefine the segment for enterprises and service provider customers. Applications run the world, and that has never been so apparent as it is now, following a year in which we have all lived with a global pandemic. Banking, curbside pickup, working from home, schooling at home, we depend on our apps more than ever.
Because of this, consumer expectations of their apps have never been higher. We discussed in great detail at our Analyst and Investor Meeting the untenable nature of the way apps are delivered and secured. What we all experience when we open an app from our phones or laptops, that elegant app and digital experience we expect every time we engage with an app, is very challenging to deliver.
It requires multiple networks, multiple clouds, basic CDNs, and Edges. Enterprise customers must stitch this all together to deliver an app because each platform comes with its unique set of functionality and services. The Edge promises many benefits that cannot escape these fundamental challenges. The Edge offers incredible promise of low-latency performance and being closer to the end user. But closed platforms remain, forcing customers to stitch together yet another set of technologies that are inconsistent with their existing ones.
Why is this so painful even at the Edge? Today's Edge is a closed platform. Customers often default to what CDNs are offering in their PoPs, the point of presence, for security, load balancing, and API management. The alternative is manually stitching it together with everything else. For enterprises, the Edge, despite these benefits, increases the pain of building, running, and securing apps.
Building Edge-enabled apps is complex, with varying functionality from the CDN vendors. Running the apps on a specific Edge platform and network is limiting, and securing apps with commodity security puts the entire system at risk. Our scale with 18,000 enterprise customers has shown us that none of these are legitimate trade-offs for enterprises. End-to-end, consistent security, and uptime to market will make or break the business. Volterra was built to solve these fundamental challenges at the Edge. It is a universal Edge-as-a-service platform.
Its paradigm-shifting open-Edge technology is designed by the leading experts in the industry to leverage the unparalleled scale of public clouds. Volterra provides a unique combination of SaaS for transparently delivering networking and security offerings anywhere, and PaaS, the platform- as- a- service, for building and running modern container and Kubernetes-based apps.
By joining forces with Volterra, we will create the first enterprise-ready Edge. We will be the first to bring to the Edge the enterprise-grade features, including world-class security and unmatched scale that have been missing until now. Those steeped in the challenges of the current Edge recognize the potential of the Volterra platform. SoftBank, a name synonymous with embracing next-gen technology, is intent on building the number one 5G network in Japan. They chose Volterra. They see its unprecedented Edge capabilities as key to solving operational challenges and generating increased revenue streams.
As SoftBank, one of the largest and most ambitious companies in the world, has chosen to use Volterra, it is a clear testament to their technology and its enterprise-grade capabilities. Today, we are introducing Edge 2.0, the first Edge platform built for enterprises and service providers. The Edge offers incredible promise that enterprises have found. It has many limitations in terms of scale, security, and simplicity.
We will get into more detail on Edge 2.0 here, but to be very simple, we see the evolution of the Edge kind of like the transformation we have seen in content. We have all vastly expanded the content consumers would consume within a defined infrastructure. TiVo , or TiVo 1.5, started to redefine how you could access and use that content, but did so within the same infrastructure constraints. Streaming, or Cable 2.0, if you will, breaks out of the infrastructure entirely.
It is anything, anywhere. The evolution of the Edge is very similar. Edge 1.0 is just based on traditional CDN, which was built with pictures and videos that require a server close to the end user for low latency. It has commodity security features disconnected from the app. It is also limited to a specific vendor's PoP network. Edge 1.5 added Edge compute, allowing apps and more than just content to run at the Edge, delivered as SaaS, but the trade-offs are massive for enterprises.
Staff teams must manually integrate custom code into the rest of the app, wasting precious time to market. It is also left unprotected with just good enough security, and like Edge 1.0, it is locked into a specific vendor's PoPs, forgoing the scale available in the app public clouds.
F5 and Volterra will introduce Edge 2.0, an open-Edge platform that will allow every service to run on any server, virtual or otherwise, inclusive of public clouds. Let me share more about what Edge 2.0 will be. Edge 2.0 will be the first Edge platform built for enterprises and service providers. There are three core attributes of Edge 2.0 that distinguish this platform from prior generations. Number one, Edge 2.0 will be security-first.
F5 and Shape's industry-leading security will be more easily deployed to the Edge and in public clouds and consistently across all environments. Number two, it will be app-driven. The app is the tentpole and all the other infrastructure is in service to it. No more manual stitching. With Volterra's universal "build once, deploy globally, app-delivered" technology, enterprises can finally achieve multi-cloud hybrid environments. Edge 2.0 will be software-defined and based on industry-standard containers and APIs.
And number three, Edge 2.0 will deliver unlimited scale. It breaks the apps out of the CDN jail of the closed Edge platforms, enabling enterprises to run any service on any server with cloud scale. I will drill down further into each of these attributes. But why is Edge 2.0 security-first? The sophistication of cyberattacks has increased, and as apps move to the Edge, so will the attacks.
Good enough checkbox security is not good enough for enterprises, and the CDN should not dictate your app portfolio's security posture. Today, F5 is the primary line of defense used by the majority of the largest banks, airlines, and federal agencies. For instance, a top-tier global airline implemented Shape on their website to recognize their consumers, to know who they were, and recognize that they were real customers and not bots.
This recognition capability enabled the airline to extend their consumers' login time, which in turn increased sales by 1.3%, driving millions in revenue. In another example, one of America's largest credit unions saw a spike in automated attacks, escalating to 200,000 per day compared to their usual 62,000 per day. They implemented Silverline, and within two days, we completely mitigated the attack.
The customer is now experiencing the benefits of machine learning and AI eliminating future attacks. Volterra makes the same level of security and assurance deployable via a SaaS platform. Enterprise customers will benefit from consistent policies and compliance across all clouds, data centers, devices, and Edges. Edge 2.0 is app-driven. Edge 1.0 and 1.5 also missed the mark on enterprises' need for simplicity in a multi-cloud world.
Today, when app teams want to incorporate Edge benefits for mobile shopping apps, say for rendering photos or running app logic closer to the end user, they must manually stitch and integrate it with other pieces of their tech stack, including cloud, network, compute, and security. Edge 2.0 will enable developers to focus on great digital experiences instead of hiding their tech stack.
First, it will provide a software-defined Edge, putting the app first and seamlessly connecting across data center, Edge, and cloud with API intelligence. Second, it will provide enterprise-grade DevOps flexibility, features, and automation for delivering modern apps. Third, with industry-standard Kubernetes containers, developers and DevOps teams will finally be able to build once, deploy globally, across modern and traditional apps. Enterprise customers will benefit from simplified operations, lower total cost of ownership, and faster time to market.
And this brings me to our third value pillar, unlimited scale. Today's enterprise Edge apps are limited to their CDN server cages. They are locked in. Edge 2.0 will let apps break out of their cages. So why do we say unlimited scale? Betting on Edge 1.x technology means confining your enterprise apps to a single hardware network, which creates significant app limitations and dangers.
For instance, performance is limited by the PoP hardware. Location-wise, it stops at the far-out access Edge. It does not go the last mile to the user Edge where more of the compute is moving. And if you want to leverage cloud scale, where manual stitching is required, Edge 2.0 allows every F5 and Volterra service to run on any server in any public cloud, data center, or within the Volterra-operated network.
This allows enterprises to move workloads between clouds and data centers when a security breach or other disaster occurs. It mitigates switching costs and gives control back to the enterprise. Plus, F5 and Volterra will be compatible with the public cloud's intelligent Edges, providing superior performance and security over third-party CDN Edge solutions. Enterprise customers gain greater flexibility, breaking them out of the CDN jail and enabling them to elastically scale with the cloud.
Today, we are introducing Edge 2.0. Not only will our Edge 2.0 platform be an advancement for the industry, it will also advance our adaptive apps vision for a world in which our customers' app portfolios adapt to their environment. An adaptive app will automate redundant processes, protect itself, securing all points of vulnerability, expand and contract based on performance needs, and learn in the process, getting smarter and becoming self-healing.
Edge 2.0 will honor the enterprise's heterogeneous environment, automating what was manual stitching with universal app delivery to the Edge, modern apps, and traditional apps, and with this ease of deployment, enterprises can consistently deliver advanced security across all environments and collect telemetry in every environment, including the Edge. F5 and Volterra's Edge 2.0 will advance our reach and role across the portfolio.
It will create a universal "build once, deploy globally" app delivery platform that automates app distribution across data center, cloud, and Edge. By honoring industry-standard containers and APIs, it will accelerate customers' modern app and digital experiences' time to market. In addition, F5 can now extend our world-class app security to the Edge, making it much easier to consume via a SaaS model, and lastly, customers will get an end-to-end view of app performance inclusive of Edge.
This rich telemetry is captured by the F5 platform, making the platform smarter and truly adaptive. Clearly, we are laying out a big vision here. Let's talk about how you will see us putting the power of this technology into the market. We will be disciplined and deliberate in driving the value creation we see possible from this combination. We expect you will see progress across a number of vectors.
Number one, we will bring F5 security to the Edge, integrating F5's industry-leading app security into Volterra's platform. Number two, we will reach new applications with the added benefit of Volterra simplifying deployment of both BIG-IP and NGINX. Number three, our SaaS offerings will be brought to market faster using the Volterra platform. And number four, we will have new compelling service provider Edge computing use cases for 5G and IoT.
It is these outcomes that have caused us to increase our revenue growth outlook for both Horizon 2 and long-term. In closing, adding the Volterra technology platform to F5 complements the entirety of our portfolio. It makes our business stronger and more competitive. The strength of our transformation and the substantial progress we have already made has put us in a position to do this transaction within the M&A guidelines we set out for ourselves at our Analyst and Investor Meeting.
The combination is immediately additive to our near-term performance, increasing our Horizon 2 revenue growth expectations to 7%-8% CAGR from 6%-7% previously. And we are reiterating our commitment to double-digit non-GAAP EPS growth and to achieving the Rule of 40 in Horizon 2. This further strengthens our ability to deliver sustainable double-digit EPS growth over the long term.
We have also increased our long-term revenue growth expectation to double-digits from the 8%-9% we shared with you at our Analyst and Investor Day . More importantly, though, we believe this acquisition and what it enables us to do with Edge 2.0 transforms our competitive position in the medium term, which means we are better positioned to claim our share of our $28 billion 2023 TAM and expand beyond that.
In summary, the investment proposition we laid out at our Analyst Day remains unchanged, but our path to delivery is significantly strengthened and accelerated. We are encouraged by our results. Our strategy is delivering real business momentum, and we look forward to continued execution to capture the potential we see ahead of us. We are very excited about this opportunity and what it will do for F5, our customers, and our investors. And we are looking forward to welcoming the Volterra team to F5. Operator, we will now open the call to Q&A.
Thank you. At this time, I'd like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. Your first question will come from the line of James Fish of Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Congrats on the deal here and the preliminary results for the quarter. I think part of Edge as a service is kind of global at scale. And first of all, you did touch upon this here in the last couple of minutes, but I guess how much would F5 need to invest to continue to build out Volterra's Edge to be able to meet any demand, especially as you think about the smaller CDNs having a few hundred points of presence, and even the larger ones having thousands? And really, what makes Volterra's Edge different than those CDNs beyond the lock-in that you were describing?
Hi, James. Thanks for the question. James, just a few timing of this call, but before I respond to your question, I would like to just comment on the violence yesterday and the attempt to disrupt the democratic process at the U.S. Capitol. As a global company, we have employees who are citizens in places where democracy is not always guaranteed.
I say this in all humility as someone who was not born in the U.S., but that's always been a shining symbol of how democracy is intended to serve the will of the people. Yesterday was a tragedy and a horrible message to the world. I was, however, extremely encouraged to see Congress return to work, affirm the outcome of the presidential election, and continue the peaceful transfer of power.
I just wanted to, given where we've been. James, let me now turn to your question. What's different about Volterra's platform is that it creates a virtual Edge. James, you probably noticed that we have a solution at F5 called Silverline, where we have a few tens of PoPs ourselves to deliver security as a managed service through these PoPs.
When we were looking at the evolution of the Edge, one of the options that was available to us was to scale that solution organically, and we could have gone out and spent significant amounts of CapEx to scale that solution to hundreds of PoPs, but that was more of an Edge 1.0 architecture, and Volterra leapfrogs that completely because they have put together a software stack
and a global network that allows them to leverage any compute infrastructure, including that of Google Cloud, and as a result, the Edge platform that we've created is unlimited in scale and can go through thousands or tens of thousands of PoPs by leveraging any compute infrastructure, whether it's a public cloud or a data center or anywhere. It could be a coffee branch.
Anywhere where there is a compute stack, we can put essentially our Edge in a box stack on that infrastructure. And so we do not have to go and spend a lot of CapEx to try and replicate a large number of PoPs that others have built. And that's a big part of the differentiation here and the leapfrog versus Edge 1.0 and 1.5 architectures.
Just to follow up on the preliminary results, systems was actually up year to year. I guess how sustainable is systems growth given the strength this quarter and any comments you give there with pulling of demand from calendar Q1 and Q2?
Yep. A couple of things on that, James. Number one, there was no pulling of demand from Q2. Number two, the strength that you saw in systems was actually broad-based across geographies and across customer segments. It's early days, and we're still to go through our QBRs. And we will comment more on that when we get through our earnings call a little bit later in the month. But that's what I'll say about the hardware. And then you also saw that there was very strong performance on software, including organic software growth.
Thanks for the questions, and congratulations guys.
Thank you, James.
Thank you.
Next question will come from the line of Alex Kurtz with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for taking the questions here. One, strategic and financial. So on the acquisition, François, what would you say Volterra is known for? Is there a best use case? Is it DDoS? Is it application delivery? Is there something that they found really good traction with that would be helpful? And then on the model, just I understand this company is still pretty small, maybe 100 people, maybe a little bit more. What does it mean for OpEx as we go through Q2 and into the rest of the year?
I'll address the first part of the question, and Frank probably can take the second part so Volterra is known largely for the capabilities of the platform and the way they have architected an Edge platform that is unlimited in scale, that is a universal virtual Edge as a service, and the integration that they've completed between the application security and delivery capabilities, the network, and the orchestration of network, Edge infrastructure, and application security and delivery.
When you look at their current customers, there are a couple of telco customers that are more for 5G and IoT use cases. And then the majority of enterprises are on application delivery and security use cases. And Frank?
That's in terms of your question on operating margins. We'll be more specific in a couple of weeks when we actually talk about the quarter and guidance specifically. I will say what we talked about last quarter's earnings call, where I said Q1 will be at a certain rate, Q2 will be below that rate, and then building back up in Q3 and Q4 is going to be the same pattern that we explained. And what we also said today is that we were not changing our outlook for operating margins in Horizon 2, including what we expected in FY21.
So FY21, Alex, we said 31%-32% operating margin, and that stands unchanged.
Okay. It's still that Q1 to Q2 dip, though, right? Not margin.
It's still that Q1 to Q2. Yep. It's a seasonal thing for us. We'll experience it again.
Okay. And we'll talk about the OpEx load at another time on the earnings call.
Correct. Yep. Give us a couple of weeks.
Yep.
Next question will come from the line of Alex Henderson of Needham. Please go ahead.
Thank you. So just to follow up on that last question, so it sounds like the upside to revenues and margins that you've procured as a result of stronger than expected demand is offsetting the dilution from the acquisition on an OpEx basis. Is that kind of the right way to think about it?
It is the right way to think about it. I think we've obviously early in the year. And so as we look at the plan and what this consumes in terms of the OpEx envelopes that we had planned for, we can absorb that within the margin guidance that we've given.
Thanks. The second question I wanted to ask is a little bit more on the technical side. You guys have been making a very strong commitment to microservices, Kubernetes-based application deployment technology, CI/CD pipeline, and the like. It sounds pretty clear that this is an extension of that, particularly with the app-centric elements of Volterra. It's been a little less than a year since I visited the company, but it's sensitive.
You're very sensitive to that. And so I guess to what extent is microservice implementation and those types of frameworks critical to this acquisition? And what are you going through? Is all of the management from Volterra expected to come over, or is anybody leaving? Thanks.
Hi, Alex. I'll start with a lot of parts, and then I'll ask Shuman to chime in on the first part of your question. All of the management team is coming, so no one is leaving. Nobody's coming to F5, and then, yes, the capabilities. One of the capabilities of Volterra is the ability for app developers to kind of build their app and deploy containers on a global basis without having to worry about the networking components of deploying that solution, and therefore,
for modern applications that are built in Kubernetes environments, this is the right platform that allows them to deploy these apps across multi-clouds and without having to worry and having to stitch together a lot of kind of networking and compute and orchestration components. And in that way, it is a complete leapfrog from the current Edge solutions that were built more for content delivery or caching as opposed to built for modern application deployment and delivery. Shuman, did you want to add anything to that?
Sure. Hi, Alex. This is Shuman Ghosemajumder. I'm our global head of AI. And I think you hit the nail on the head that we see microservices as an essential part of how modern applications are built. They're used throughout enterprises across the world. And in order to be able to create those cumulative application experiences through microservices now, there's a great deal of complexity that the Edge only adds to.
And so what Volterra is designed to do is to be able to simplify all of that into a single stack and a platform that can allow you to be able to implement microservices in such a way that you get a consistent experience from a security perspective as well.
Thank you very much
Thank you, Alex,
and the next question will come from the line of Samik Chatterjee of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, Alex. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering just in relation to the 12-18-month integration timeline that you outlined here, and you did outline kind of four drivers starting with securing apps anywhere that kind of how the portfolio benefits from this Volterra acquisition. Are most of these revenue synergies to put kind of a buzzword or jargon around it? If you think of these as revenue synergies, are most of these post 12- to 18-month integration, or you're already or kind of the more of the to Shape come through even before the integration is done? I'm going to have a follow-up, please.
Thank you. Yes, most of these are in fact security synergy, sorry, revenue synergies. The key about this acquisition, to me, is it isn't about an individual product. It's that Volterra platform has the potential to accelerate growth for the entire F5 portfolio because we can bring all of our security capabilities, including Shape, and incentive them on the Volterra platform, which will accelerate our growth in security at the Edge. But it also makes the deployment of BIG-IP and NGINX easier.
So for customers that want to deploy BIG-IP and NGINX in multi-cloud environments, once we do the integration with Volterra, deploying that in multi-cloud without having to worry about stitching a bunch of things together gets greatly simplified. And what we've seen over time is when our technology is easier to consume and easier to deploy, it gets consumed a lot more. And so the acceleration and the potential revenue synergies are across the entire portfolio.
And then there is an opportunity to even expand our TAM [audio distortion] for $28 billion with use cases in Edge computing and IoT that the platform enables because this platform, unlike kind of current Edge solutions that are limited by their topologies and their PoP infrastructure, this platform can leverage tens of thousands of nodes from any type of infrastructure to address Edge computing use cases that are much closer to the user than a PoP of a CDN. So those are the elements of synergies, potential growth, and breakout from the acquisition.
Got it. And just a quick follow-up on the results that you reported, the results that you gave. Any kind of changes in the enterprise spending landscape that you're seeing? Obviously, you have strong results and you have orchestration and software revenue growth as well as better results on systems. But how much of that would you say is a function of much better spending coming from customers or anything on that front?
Samik, can I just clarify how much of that is much better spending from our customers?
Yes. How much of that would you attribute to just the much better spending environment versus focusing on the products?
I think we'll see more at the end of the month on this. I don't think we have seen a vastly different environment in terms of spending micro environment than I think we saw in the prior quarters. But in general, we have seen through the COVID period, everybody is going to be doing more and more things digitally. And you've seen strong resilience of the F5 business through that period. And I think as a result, there's more demand for application services and application infrastructure. And we're seeing that across the business.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you for taking my questions.
Your next question will come from the line of Meta Marshall of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. François, you laid out your Edge 2.0 vision. Do you think of expanding upon that primarily through security-based products or applications? And do you think you can accomplish that organically, or will there be kind of other acquisitions necessary? And then maybe just some metrics. Did you mention whether there was any meaningful customer overlap today or just how Volterra kind of primarily charges for their products? Thanks.
So let me try and address these in turn. So the last part, Meta, Volterra is a SaaS platform, and their business model is full-time service. So that's the charging model. There is some customer overlap. Volterra has roughly around 60 customers.
I think about half of those are actually F5 customers, but the customer overlap per se was not a driver of the acquisition. However, the types of customers was because it was clear from our discussions that Volterra had actually architected a platform for large enterprises and service providers, and it really is the first Edge platform that is built for that, and then to the first part of your question around whether we will need more acquisitions to deploy our strategy at the Edge, the answer to that is no.
We have a phenomenal position at the Edge when you combine the security capabilities that we already have and the platform that Volterra has built. We are an application delivery and security company, and this platform will accelerate our security business, but also our delivery business, especially for modern application environments.
Great. Thanks.
Your next question will come from the line of Tal Liani of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Two quick questions. First, do you need to adjust your go-to-market channels for the acquisition, or can existing organizations deal with the different types of sale?
Tal, it's a great question. So the answer is no for the most part and yes for some parts. So where we are already very well set up to serve and to create value from Volterra is in terms of selling security as a service at the Edge. As you know, we have a very scalable security business and relationships with SecOps personnel and CSOs at large enterprises already and have already had experience selling packaged software to them, but also managed software and service security. So for security, I think we're all set.
For ease of deployment of BIG-IP and NGINX in sort of multi-cloud networking use cases, we are all set. We have the right go-to-market personnel, and we also have the right channel partners that will support that. The one area where we will adjust, if you will, is this platform also appeals to app developers and then DevOps personnel. And we have a latent capability there with the go-to-market team that came from NGINX. So we will want to put more muscle behind that because there's a real opportunity there to attract a new buyer persona to F5.
Got it. My second question is more about the quarter. I know this question will pass multiple ways. I'll ask it again. The growth in systems is very different from what we've seen before. And I'm trying to understand if there was any fundamental change in the environment that drives growth now versus times before or whether there's something more unique to this quarter that drove this number now. I'm trying to understand the sustainability of the trend of the growth.
Yeah. And Tal, I will say what I said before, which is that we will say more about all of that at the end of January. But I do want to answer your question as best I can right now. I think the most important data point for you is the chunk of hardware. It wasn't linked to a single customer or customer segment or a single geography. It was across the board, number one.
Number two is, I think, at a macro level, we are benefiting from the acceleration in digital transformations that a number of companies have embarked on as a result of COVID. We're seeing an acceleration of everything digital and everything done through applications, and for F5, yes, of course, that translates into growth of software, but it's also an element of people having our hardware installed and wanting to increase the capacity to support the need of applications, which leads to what we're seeing in hardware.
I would say, I mean, we said that at our Analyst and Investor Day, we said that we expect that our hardware is inclined to moderate and to evolve to the mid-single-digit decline. What we're seeing here is mid-single-digit growth.
So yes, we are somewhat surprised relative to where we were two months ago with the strength that we have seen, but we've seen it across the board. So we're going to continue to look into this and be able to say more at the end of January.
Your next question will come from the line of Paul Silverstein of Cowen. Please go ahead.
So François, I actually did hear your response to Tal's question, but if I may, and I just apologize because I know you want to leave it for when you formally announce your results. I'm trying to ask the question a different way, which is, if we look at your bookings, what were your bookings for the quarter? What was your book-to-bill?
We don't disclose that one, but we had strong bookings.
So your prospect demand metrics are strong?
Yeah. Let's just say it this way, Paul. I mean, I'm just going to if the thing behind your question is, did we pull in some demand? We're looking for not strong, and then we pulled in demand for strong revenue. That is absolutely not the case. Demand was very strong.
Okay. Let me move on and I apologize on one of the occasions. So if you've already given this, I do apologize, but if I saw the numbers correctly, it looks like I think you correct me, François. I think you said you're expecting $10 million worth of contribution this year, this fiscal year, and you increased your growth forecast for Q2 2021-2022 by 1 percentage point on each end of the range. That would suggest that you are expecting at least an incremental $25 million or $10 million correctly, $35 million in total revenue at least in terms of contribution in fiscal 2022 for Volterra. Did I get that right?
Roughly, Paul. I don't know that I can split it so finely between $10 million now and $25 million next year. But we did see less than $10 million, and the offset of that in the Horizon 1, Horizon 2 times is organic growth of the business.
So you're increasing by 1 percentage point. That's not just reflecting your expectations for Volterra. It's also reflecting that you feel more confident about organic growth. Or is that not the case?
That's correct.
Okay. If we look at Volterra's demand metrics or looking at metrics, in particular bookings, I assume if you're talking about less than $10 million in revenue, I assume your bookings are running at least two, if not five plus times revenue levels at this point. Is there any insight you can give us? I heard you say 60 customers. Anything you can share with us in terms of the progression of demand? I heard you say they only came out of stealth a few months ago, so I appreciate it's early. But again, if you look at the demand metrics in terms of revenue going forward, anything you can share with us?
Not at this time, Paul. I think we generally don't talk about bookings on a per-product line basis. But I would say we are really excited about the standalone business, but we're much more excited about what the combination is going to mean for the entire F5 portfolio, as François mentioned. That's going to take some time to fully integrate and see that value, but that's where our focus is going to be for the next 12 or 18 months.
One last question before I may. François, I heard you say three major carriers, one of which is such as SoftBank. How many Fortune 10 or Fortune 100 customers among the 60?
I don't know, Paul. Off the top of my head, we can probably come back to that later on in the month, but it is large enterprises.
And their names please recognize.
Some, yes.
All right. I appreciate the response. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
Your next question will come from the line of Sami Badri of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much. First question is, François, you made the comment regarding unlimited scale, and you compared, or at least you're making a case that with unlimited scale, it's going to be better than the CDNs that have limited performance due to their hardware. Can you just tell us how Volterra actually does this differently? And then kind of with that, does Volterra currently build out or deploy its PoPs using F5 hardware, or are you using something else that will essentially all become F5 hardware?
Great question. Let me ask Shuman . Let me ask you to answer this question.
Sure. So the core of the argument is that you want to be able to have as much universality as possible in terms of being able to build out that Edge capacity. So the way that the more recent CDN-based vendors have done this is by creating flexible servers that are built around the world that allow them to be able to execute a variety of different services on every single one of those servers.
What Volterra does is it uses industry-standard containers so that those containers can then be executed not only on their own hardware, which they have in PoPs around the world, of course, but also on public clouds, on other enterprise data centers, and basically wherever you can execute a container, which is a very flexible set of places all around the world.
And so that gives you the ability to get closer to users than ever before, including being able to extend all the way to the user Edge. In terms of the hardware that Volterra uses, I don't know exactly where they're using F5 hardware, but they do have the ability to run on all of these different platforms, which can be supported by a variety of different hardware methods.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you. The other kind of question I have related to that one is the majority of Volterra's PoPs are currently across Europe, Seattle location, Bay Area, Ashburn. Is the goal here to just get Volterra deployed across every single major enterprise hub as fast as possible, or can they automatically just deploy across public clouds to get there?
They can automatically deploy. So they've already created that software capability to be able to run in all of those major public clouds and data centers.
Okay. Got it. Got it.
And Sami, that's actually that point was actually very key for us in making this decision. I said earlier we could have gone out and we had to spend a lot of CapEx to build up our Edge 1.0 architecture and scale it to hundreds and hundreds of PoPs. And when we were looking at this build, buy, or partner decision, we decided to buy and partner.
And part of our decision, we had already very strong relationships with public clouds like AWS or Azure, and we felt we could build on these relationships and leverage the way that Volterra has built a platform to deploy at scale, leveraging their infrastructure. But ultimately, we believe the public clouds have the muscle, the tactics, and the ambition to build out Edge infrastructure in a way that it's going to be very difficult for third-party CDNs to compete with and replicate.
Got it. Thank you. And then that was helpful. Maybe just to think about everything previous, how integrated are F5 and Volterra even before you guys even get started with the integration processes? Are there already integration backgrounds, combined solutions, anything in a channel that overlapped before this? Can you just give us an idea here in terms of where the start line really is for this path?
No, there hasn't been integration already done. Of course, there's been a phenomenal amount of technical due diligence to understand how rapidly we could do the integration. We've walked away from this feeling very comfortable as to how we would approach the integration and the sort of timescales in which we would do it. There was no technical integration that was done prior to that in the market, if you will, to serve a specific customer.
Got it. Then I have one question for Frank, a ccelerated share repurchase program in fiscal 2021, how accelerated are we talking about here? Is this front-end loaded fiscal 2021, or is it just give us an idea on how accelerated are we talking about here?
Sami, we're not announcing we're actually going to be in the market, so I'm not going to talk about it specifically. Obviously, as part of the definition of accelerated share repurchase, when we go out on the market, it will be all at once across the fiscal year.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Due to time, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you very much for joining. You may now disconnect.