CRN Exclusive: A10 Networks Launches Cloud Offensive With New ADC Controller Supporting Google, AWS And Azure Clouds

A major cloud offensive is underway at A10 Networks with the launch today of new analytics capabilities and an ADC controller that provides multi-cloud and multi-service management that supports cloud titans such as Amazon Web Services and Google.

"What we're bringing to market is really control for multiple secure application services across multiple clouds," said Paul Nicholson, A10's product marketing manager, in an interview with CRN. "So whether they're running on-premises. on a private cloud or in an emerging platform such as AWS or Google, we're providing them solutions and visibility across all those deployments to give them agility and greater security when they're trying to deploy these applications."

The San Jose, Calif.-based networking vendor's new A10 Harmony Controller is built on microservices and container technology providing central management, orchestration and analytics across all clouds.

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Partners can sell the new controller as a Software-as-a-Service solution or as a self-managed version that can be deployed within a customer's data center or cloud.

The controller has multi-cloud support for elastic load balancing and web application firewall for VMware-powered private clouds, Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

A10's channel chief Kirsten Young said the company is striving to open up more cloud opportunities for channel partners to drive new revenues.

"With the technology landscape shifting with things like AWS and new technologies coming in – which some partners might not be as familiar with – the SaaS option … allows channel partners to add additional revenue streams which might be shifting from their traditional on-prem business to the cloud," said Young, vice president of worldwide channels.

Luanne Tierney, managing member of Fivesky, a New York City-based A10 Networks partner, said the new solution presents "the next wave in the ADC market."

"Customers are moving quickly to these new cloud technologies because of the flexibility, scalability, and programmability they provide," Tierney said.

Nicholson said at the heart of the solution is advanced, per-applications analytics. The controller integrates analytics for A10's software and hardware portfolio and cloud-native offerings.

Integration with other A10 services including SSL inspection, carrier-grade network address translation (NAT) and converged firewall will become available in the second half of 2017.

The vendor also unveiled new analytics capabilities across its entire application delivery infrastructure including the A10 Lightening and Thunder ADC portfolio. Additionally, A10 is providing analytics for open source load balancer HAProxy.

"We know customers out there are using Open Source options. We're not going to try to fight it, we're going to embrace it," said Nicholson. "HAProxy is used by a lot of organization out there. They don't have any advanced analytics themselves in this open source version. What we're hoping to do is create a win-win for partners."

In July, A10 acquired Appcito which owned a SaaS-based application delivery cloud solution. The vendor has integrated Appcito's technology to enhance A10's application delivery technology and cloud-based A10 Harmony architecture.