F5 Networks unveiled a series of solutions and innovations designed for customers requiring rich, consistent application services across private, public, and hybrid cloud application deployments.
In addition, F5 announced combined solutions with Equinix Cloud Exchange and Performance Hub that empower enterprises to deploy business-critical applications in multiple public cloud infrastructures with leading security, availability, and performance.
As businesses transform to digital-first organizations, applications and associated services are vital for competitive differentiation. F5 is bringing these solutions to market as IT must enable both established and emerging environments to better integrate DevOps practices, agile development, and cloud resources. F5 sits in a unique position at the convergence of cloud and data center application services, enabling customers to embrace modern infrastructures without sacrificing security and control.
“A digital economy means that applications and services must be easy to deploy, low-friction, and quick to scale to help organizations pivot toward new market opportunities,” said Ryan Kearny, EVP of Product Development and CTO, F5. “Only F5 provides programmable, feature-rich software and hardware to unify the delivery of apps across data center and cloud environments, including container and microservices use cases. Our solutions further reduce deployment time through valuable integrations, native orchestration capabilities, and compelling partnership solutions, such as our colocation offerings with Equinix.”
Migrating IT workflows to the cloud promises significant advantages, but can place unintended stress on parallel management, security, and operations functions. While evolving their business models, organizations are challenged to deliver service enhancements to keep up with the changing requirements of growing user counts, applications, and traffic volumes. As enterprises travel different paths to the cloud, F5 is introducing technologies that bridge between established IT and more cloud-fluent infrastructure models.
F5 is expanding its BIG-IP offerings with the iSeries line of ‘software-defined hardware’ Application Delivery Controllers. The new hardware platforms incorporate industry-leading programmability with support for node.js via iRules LX, enabling customers to tailor their systems for evolving infrastructure needs. Unique to the iSeries, F5’s TurboFlex™ technology enables selectable performance profiles to maximize investment protection and deliver dedicated cloud, security, and app delivery optimizations. Similarly, iSeries platforms can be specifically configured to support enhanced DDoS protection, as well as private cloud and SDN technologies from organizations such as OpenStack, Cisco, and VMware. Additional detail about F5’s iSeries platforms is available in this companion blog post.
F5’s comprehensive partnership with Equinix, leveraging both the Equinix Cloud Exchange and Performance Hub, enables enhanced global access to application delivery and security services. Through the Equinix Cloud Exchange — available in 21 markets — F5 provides direct, seamless access to its cloud services, bypassing the public Internet and thus increasing performance and security. And, by combining the F5 cloud gateway with Equinix Performance Hub, customers can take advantage of a hybrid interconnection model, providing high-speed and low-latency connectivity between multiple cloud providers and enterprise networks. The net result of F5 and Equinix efforts is an optimized, secure application delivery model that delivers the utmost in application performance and user experience possible.
F5 will expand its agile software portfolio with solutions that are simple to use and integrate with management and orchestration tools. These technologies grant customers a more flexible approach to application deployment and better take advantage of the operations gains and efficiency of the cloud. Specifically, F5 is introducing the following:
- Application Services Proxy provides basic load balancing and application traffic visibility in a small, lightweight form factor that can quickly be deployed. This gives customers ultimate flexibility in developing, testing, and scaling applications and associated services in concert with cloud and container environments.
- Container Connector offerings enable the provisioning of services for containerized applications, and make it easy to integrate capabilities from management/orchestration systems such as Kubernetes and Mesos/Marathon. For simple load balancing, Application Services Proxy can be used in highly portable environments; for more substantial application delivery services, the connector automates provisioning to a BIG-IP solution.
- Application Connector dramatically simplifies access for enterprise applications hosted in the public cloud, providing the security and availability services those applications require. To accomplish this, it delivers application services from the edge of the cloud by automatically discovering cloud-hosted instances and connecting them to the customer’s data center or hosted location.
BIG-IP iSeries platforms are available now. Offerings from F5 and Equinix, along with related partnership details, are available now.
Formal availability for F5’s Application Services Proxy, Container Connector, and Application Connector technologies will be announced at a later date.
The Latest
According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...
2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...
Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...
An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...
Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...
In March, New Relic published the State of Observability for Media and Entertainment Report to share insights, data, and analysis into the adoption and business value of observability across the media and entertainment industry. Here are six key takeaways from the report ...
Regardless of their scale, business decisions often take time, effort, and a lot of back-and-forth discussion to reach any sort of actionable conclusion ... Any means of streamlining this process and getting from complex problems to optimal solutions more efficiently and reliably is key. How can organizations optimize their decision-making to save time and reduce excess effort from those involved? ...
As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...
According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...
Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...