What is the growth rate of the systems business compared to the Horizon 2 target 
t off, I just want to just talk on systems growth and what you've seen so far it sounds to be much better than the Horizon 2 all the long-term target. So you just remind us what is driving that growth? And should we think what this means for Horizon 2 growth for the systems?
Francois Locoh-Donou -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, I mean -- the, what's driving the systems growth. I think, there are few micro sectors in the sense that I think the IT spending environment right now is fairly healthy and there is also a lot of consumption of digital services by consumers and that in turn is fueling growth in application. So growth in demand for application. I would say that is kind of the biggest micro factor because what we see is a lot of our customers when they're refreshing their appliances, they don't go just for a refresh, they go for refresh and capacity expansion and sometimes it's capacity expansion and transformation because they want to move in a private cloud environment and that's driven by there just more traffic and more usage of it even their traditional applications. We see, as I said earlier, growth with digital and fast service providers and for them the growth comes from -- they're are sometimes their services, but demand for their services whether it's collaboration platforms or e-commerce platforms or even SaaS providers, the demand for their services are growing rapidly and we are built into their infrastructure and so that drives demand for our hardware, our systems into their infrastructure.
And I would say, generally there is also a fundamental change in stance, Amit, from when you go back three, four years ago. I would regularly hear from customers four years ago, look we don't want to buy more hardware because we're going to move everything to the cloud, we're going to be out of our data centers. We've got to figure out our architecture, and at the time we said there was a pause because people were thinking their architecture. There is not a single CIO that has told me this in the last 12 months. Every one of them -- I think a lot of people have learned from the first implementations in public cloud, sometimes the cost and time associated with refactoring applications. And generally, I think people are more comfortable that they're going to be in a hybrid environment for a very, very long time to come. It's not forever. And so they're comfortable growing their on-prem presence with hardware where it makes sense and leveraging the public cloud for other initiatives. And I think that that halo, that environment is very different than it was four years ago.
And then the last factor that has an impact on our systems business, I mean it is security. I said earlier that we had very strong growth in SaaS security with Shape subscription, security with NGINX. But we also have very healthy double-digit growth in hardware security and that's because the -- all of these apps need to be secured and customers are aware of the risks, so they're moving forward with application security.
Amit Daryanani -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Got it. that is really helpful. If I could just maybe ask you to clarify a little bit more for me. I think a lot of folks tend to think that if the software business grows 35%, systems has to be planned, its a bit of a either [Indecipherable] sometimes for people. Is it fair to say given what you just outlined with hybrid being the reality that you could have systems growth and software growth be more durable over time versus not?
Francois Locoh-Donou -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, is the potentially a possible scenario. I would separate though. When you look at our software business, you've got NGINX and Shape, and I don't think there's any relationship between the growth of that part of our software portfolio and the growth in hardware. When you look at BIG-IP per se, this is where we have seen and we try to continue to see some customers that we would have expected to have moved to software form factor right now that are delaying or reconsid
t off, I just want to just talk on systems growth and what you've seen so far it sounds to be much better than the Horizon 2 all the long-term target. So you just remind us what is driving that growth? And should we think what this means for Horizon 2 growth for the systems?
Francois Locoh-Donou -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, I mean -- the, what's driving the systems growth. I think, there are few micro sectors in the sense that I think the IT spending environment right now is fairly healthy and there is also a lot of consumption of digital services by consumers and that in turn is fueling growth in application. So growth in demand for application. I would say that is kind of the biggest micro factor because what we see is a lot of our customers when they're refreshing their appliances, they don't go just for a refresh, they go for refresh and capacity expansion and sometimes it's capacity expansion and transformation because they want to move in a private cloud environment and that's driven by there just more traffic and more usage of it even their traditional applications. We see, as I said earlier, growth with digital and fast service providers and for them the growth comes from -- they're are sometimes their services, but demand for their services whether it's collaboration platforms or e-commerce platforms or even SaaS providers, the demand for their services are growing rapidly and we are built into their infrastructure and so that drives demand for our hardware, our systems into their infrastructure.
 And I would say, generally there is also a fundamental change in stance, Amit, from when you go back three, four years ago. I would regularly hear from customers four years ago, look we don't want to buy more hardware because we're going to move everything to the cloud, we're going to be out of our data centers. We've got to figure out our architecture, and at the time we said there was a pause because people were thinking their architecture. There is not a single CIO that has told me this in the last 12 months. Every one of them -- I think a lot of people have learned from the first implementations in public cloud, sometimes the cost and time associated with refactoring applications. And generally, I think people are more comfortable that they're going to be in a hybrid environment for a very, very long time to come. It's not forever. And so they're comfortable growing their on-prem presence with hardware where it makes sense and leveraging the public cloud for other initiatives. And I think that that halo, that environment is very different than it was four years ago.
And then the last factor that has an impact on our systems business, I mean it is security. I said earlier that we had very strong growth in SaaS security with Shape subscription, security with NGINX. But we also have very healthy double-digit growth in hardware security and that's because the -- all of these apps need to be secured and customers are aware of the risks, so they're moving forward with application security.
Amit Daryanani -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Got it. that is really helpful. If I could just maybe ask you to clarify a little bit more for me. I think a lot of folks tend to think that if the software business grows 35%, systems has to be planned, its a bit of a either [Indecipherable] sometimes for people. Is it fair to say given what you just outlined with hybrid being the reality that you could have systems growth and software growth be more durable over time versus not?
Francois Locoh-Donou -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
 Yes, is the potentially a possible scenario. I would separate though. When you look at our software business, you've got NGINX and Shape, and I don't think there's any relationship between the growth of that part of our software portfolio and the growth in hardware. When you look at BIG-IP per se, this is where we have seen and we try to continue to see some customers that we would have expected to have moved to software form factor right now that are delaying or reconsid