A multi-cloud world: F5 ramps up cloud market with new solutions

F5 Networks, an American company that specializes in cloud and security solutions for service providers, enterprises, governments and consumer brands.

F5 has announced the availability of new solutions that are designed to provide consistent application services in multi-cloud environments.

F5's 2017 State of Application Delivery report finds that while more customers than ever are shifting to cloud infrastructures, many are consciously choosing to invest in multiple cloud technologies.

80% of survey respondents report that they are committed to multi-cloud architectures, and 20% state that they will have over half their applications running in the public and/or private clouds this year.

"Customers are increasingly choosing to deploy applications in multiple clouds—public and private, in colocation facilities, and in their own data centers—but are struggling with the management of different development environments, tool sets, and orchestration technologies," comments Sangeeta Anand, SVP of Product Management and Product Marketing at F5.

Anand says that where these clouds provide services for applications, they often do so in ways that are not portable enough, are use-case specific, or provide inadequate protection.

"F5's portfolio of multi-cloud application services and solutions gives customers the freedom to deploy any application—anywhere—with consistent application services and enterprise-grade security.

"Business executives are beginning to rely heavily on cloud solutions in support of their digital transformation efforts, but in many cases, single cloud deployments are insufficient to enable true business agility," comments Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research.

"Unfortunately, multi-cloud frameworks are complex and IT must take the steps needed to mitigate the challenges of operating in these mixed worlds. With F5's multi-cloud portfolio of products, IT can deliver consistent and secure application services in any environment needed for business velocity.

F5's new range of cloud solutions and features include:

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition in the Google Cloud: Organisations can deploy F5 services in all major public clouds. Customers can choose from a range of cloud platforms, with the new 'bring your own license' offering for instances ranging from 25 Mbps to 5 Gbps. This solution is available now from Google Cloud Launcher.

Cloud solution templates for Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google: This solution aims to reduce the complexity of deploying F5 services for applications in the public cloud. These new solution-specific templates simplify and automate common public cloud use cases.

Lightweight application services proxy: This gives customers flexibility in developing, testing, and scaling applications in cloud and container environments.

Container connector: This solution aims to provide easy provisioning of services for containerised applications, and simple integration of capabilities from management/orchestration systems including Kubernetes and Mesos/Marathon. Available now at GitHub and Docker Hub.

Application Connector: This 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.