F5 Is Returning To Its 'Roots' As It Develops The ADC For The AI Era

‘This really goes to the wheelhouse of the business that we have been in with our partner community for as long as we’ve been in business. … We’re redefining the next era of our business,’ F5’s channel chief, Lisa Citron, tells CRN ahead of its revamped application delivery control vision.

Application delivery and security specialist F5 has a vision for the next generation of application delivery control in the AI era.

F5’s transformed Application Delivery Controller “ADC 3.0” strategy—a category that the company has owned—is focused on security, optimization and app delivery at a time in which ADCs must adapt to take on the demands of modern, AI-fueled apps, Lisa Citron (pictured), F5’s channel chief, told CRN.

The Seattle-based company is now highlighting reference architectures and key alliances with technology partners like NetApp and Nvidia as it refreshes its approach to the market and provides its partners with the tools they need.

“This really goes to the wheelhouse of the business that we have been in with our partner community for as long as we’ve been in business. … We’re redefining the next era of our business,” she said.

According to a recent “State of Application Strategy Report” by F5, 75 percent of enterprises reported deploying AI apps in some form. But despite the rush to power new and modern digital experiences, most enterprises are not equipped to secure and deliver AI applications or handle the large amounts of data they require. That’s why enterprises need a new approach to the underlying tech stack that is powered by traditional ADC technology, and it’s a big area of opportunity for the channel, Citron said.

“What I think our partners are really going to love is the fact that we’re bringing them and our customers reference architectures and key alliance relationships, where us plus another technology vendor equal solving a huge problem in making AI better, faster, more secure for them,” Citron said.

F5 is rolling out a series of new reference architectures to organize AI and machine learning workflows into seven core building blocks with the help of its technology partners. The use cases will include compute, data and storage, large language model (LLM) security and observability, and cloud service provider, according to the company.

The company in these reference architectures will be highlighting the relationships it has with other technology providers, Citron said.

“I can’t underscore enough the importance of the relationship we have with Nvidia and the work that we’re doing with them to put this AI capability into the hands of end customers,” she said.

The reference architectures will begin to be made available this week, with more rolling out over time leading up to AppWorld in February, the company’s flagship app and API security conference, F5 said.

A Return To Its Origins

F5, which was formerly known as F5 Networks, in 2021 dropped “Networks” from its name as the company started to emphasize its focus on application services and security. F5 in recent years has adjusted its portfolio based on the needs of the market, including the addition of application security, cloud and mobility. Now it’s about addressing AI with the help of partners, Citron said.

“We’re really excited to be able to think about all of the acquisitions we’ve made, the technology we have, and strengthening this message of how important application delivery and security is to this era,” she said.

F5 does more than 90 percent of its business through channel partners.

“What the ADC 3.0 campaign really is doing, in my opinion, is bringing F5 back to its roots of its infrastructure, high availability and delivery of applications, which was what they became famous for when they built the company in 1996. They really invented that space,” said Todd Hathaway, global practice manager of AI, app and API security for World Wide Technology (WWT).

AI, said Hathaway, was the catalyst for the company’s current ADC 3.0 campaign.

Longtime F5 partner WWT’s Infrastructure and Security teams are actively integrating F5 into its AI go-to-market reference architectures that the company has built alongside its other key AI infrastructure partners, Hathaway said.

“F5 doesn’t replace any of those other key partners in our solutions. It’s an ‘and’ story for us. It’s now we can build our architectures, and you can deliver these applications better and faster with F5 included in our designs,” he said.