F5 customers trust the excellent technical depth and expert guidance they get from our certified partners.However, often our technical training for partners has been based on whatever new features or product updates were most pressing.
While this approach has worked, it has also unintentionally left gaps and put much of the learning burden on partners. While our partner technical engineers have always had strong general skills, there has been no coordinated way for them ramp up their knowledge on F5 solutions. There also hasn’t been a formalized way to recognize the expertise they have built up from years of experience. All of this changes today.
I’m excited to announce that F5 is formalizing our technical training for partner engineers with the launch of F5 Partner Foundations, a structured learning curriculum that takes engineers from novice to platform expert.
“Ultimately, the F5 Partner Foundations program will allow customers to engage with engineers that have deep technical knowledge—enabling faster deployment times, reduced implementation risks, and better solution alignment across different technologies and IT environments.”
Partner Foundations: Building technical expertise
Partner Foundations is available through Partner Central. Each two-to-three hour course covers a core product family within the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) and is a first step in the partner credentialing journey. The three foundational courses are:
- F5 BIG-IP Foundation: Core platform concepts, pre-sales technical knowledge, and hands-on lab reinforcement for F5's flagship physical and virtualized networking and security solution.
- F5 NGINX Foundation: Modern application security and delivery, web server fundamentals, and F5 NGINX One platform essentials for cloud-native environments.
- F5 Distributed Cloud Services Foundation: Multicloud networking, edge security, and understanding SaaS-based F5 Distributed Cloud Services from the ground up.
Each foundational course is online and self-paced because we understand how busy you, our partners, are.We have deliberately designed these courses to build long-lasting knowledge in the shortest time possible through three proven methods engineers prefer:
- Read and absorb: The new, structured content builds foundational understanding and core concepts.
- Watch and connect: Simulated demos show these core concepts in action to unite theory with real-world application.
- Do and master: Real-time, hands-on labs lock in these core concepts by translating the knowledge into actual action.
Since we know many partners have years of practical experience, we are also providing ways for experienced engineers to demonstrate their knowledge by passing the final assessment without going through the training. Either way you proceed, passing these foundational exams is required to unlock the path forward to specialization.
Great for partners and customers
Skilling up engineers on F5 solutions shouldn’t be a challenge. To make it easy, we have created a program that helps you onboard new engineers regardless of their backgrounds to establish a shared base of F5 knowledge across your teams. Engineers gain in-depth technical knowledge with verifiable expertise, enabling your organization to grow faster and create deeper margins, while building lasting customer relationships.
We’ve also added a great way to connect with our community of partner engineers.When your technical experts complete the program, they are added to a dedicated F5 DevCentral group for collaborative discussions and community learning.
Ultimately, the Partner Foundations program will allow customers to engage with engineers that have deep technical knowledge—enabling faster deployment times, reduced implementation risks, and better solution alignment across different technologies and IT environments.
From foundations to specializations
Completing the Partner Foundations is just the beginning of our refreshed training journey. The next step will be specializations that cover core infrastructure, security, AI, automation, and programmability across the F5 platform. These specialization courses are currently in development and will roll out throughout the remainder of 2026.
To get started on one of our F5 Partner Foundations courses, log on to the Partner Central Learning Hub.
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