F5, a longtime market chief in utility supply, kicked off day one in all its AppWorld convention in Las Vegas by asserting what it described as the primary converged utility supply controller (ADC) and safety platform for hybrid multi-cloud infrastructures in an more and more AI-focused world.
The brand new F5 Utility Supply and Safety Platform combines high-performance load balancing and site visitors administration with app and API safety.
Earlier this 12 months, the corporate introduced its ADC 3.0 imaginative and prescient to align its core product line with the AI period. Whereas F5 has had many opponents emerge over time, together with big-name manufacturers reminiscent of Cisco, NetScaler, Juniper and Riverbed, it has stayed forward of the curve by means of acquisitions and alignment with market developments. Though the seller did not launch an official 2.0 imaginative and prescient for transferring on-premises to cloud, it is now evolving the product for AI.
Curiosity in AI is excessive, but it surely’s truthful to say that deploying AI is dear, raises complexity and creates new cyber dangers that may successfully paralyze IT and safety groups. I wish to place F5 because the “Rosetta Stone” of IT, as its ADC interprets between networking and purposes and now safety. This provides the corporate a singular position to play in fixing the challenges of AI in a hybrid, multi-cloud atmosphere.
What the F5 Platform Provides
The brand new F5 platform addresses challenges for enterprises that function hybrid multi-cloud environments by providing the next:
In a prebriefing, Greg Maudsley, senior director of product advertising and marketing at F5, stated he believes the product is properly positioned due to its single platform for utility supply and safety, API automation, and constant safety insurance policies throughout the cloud, on-premises and the sting.
“This isn’t simply checkbox performance,” Maudsley stated. “This platform is extremely automatable with APIs, which lets you have issues like constant safety insurance policies throughout a hybrid multi-cloud atmosphere.”
Converging App Supply and Safety within the Period of AI
Lori MacVittie, distinguished engineer and chief evangelist for F5, stated this unified platform is the end result of years of innovation and acquisitions, together with Volterra and NGINX. What started as a consolidated bodily platform 30 years in the past advanced into an ADC for all of the exercise that exploded with the rise of the web and the necessity for cybersecurity. Then got here the cloud, and now AI is on the rise, which is prompting the event of AI level options, she stated.
“We see issues like immediate safety, a really particular drawback that wants a particular level answer to resolve it,” MacVittie stated. “We see AI gateways coming.”
She additionally cited F5 analysis displaying that organizations battle in more and more distributed, multi-cloud, hybrid environments. Respondents cited inconsistent safety and supply insurance policies as their prime frustrations.
“They need to consolidate,” MacVittie stated. “They need to scale back the variety of distributors, instruments, consoles, APIs and precise companies they need to function and do enterprise.”
New Platform Capabilities
F5 additionally introduced a number of new choices and capabilities as a part of its F5 Utility Supply and Safety Platform. These embody:
AI is altering virtually each facet of IT, with a lot of the consideration targeted on compute infrastructure, most notably GPU-enabled servers. If corporations are going to achieve success with AI, the expertise up and down the stack wants to vary, which incorporates the whole lot between the apps and the community. The ADC performs a key position in guaranteeing purposes will be delivered effectively and securely, and it’ll play an necessary position in controlling prices whereas guaranteeing efficiency is excessive.