F5’s New App Delivery, Security Platform Built To ‘Meet The Moment’ Of New App, AI Security Demands

F5 has unveiled its application delivery and security platform with products that partners 'know and love:' BIG-IP, distributed cloud services, and NGINX technology combined into one software stack, the company revealed at F5's annual AppWorld 2025 event this week.

Application delivery and security specialist F5 has introduced its application delivery and security platform, integrating BIG-IP, distributed cloud services, and NGINX technology into a single place for complete delivery and security for every application, according to the company.

The new platform, revealed at F5's annual AppWorld 2025 event on Wednesday, converges the company’s three separate point products into one to address high-performance load balancing, multi-cloud networking, full web app and API security, and AI gateway capabilities, F5 Chief Innovation Officer Kunal Anand revealed during the company's partner day.

"We’re thrilled to announce the application delivery and security platform to meet this moment," Anand said. "What we’re describing here is more than a mere controller. A mere controller is something that's taken us so far over the last 30 years, but our needs have evolved. Our needs have fundamentally moved from a controller to a platform. What got us here will not get us there.”

By converging the functionality of the three separate offerings that customers and partners “all know and love” into one platform, the company is improving functionality, especially at a time when IT environments have never been so complex with distributed, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure and new demands being placed on the network by AI, Anand said.

“We’re so proud of being able to bring the best of the F5 portfolio to help customers solve what we believe is some of the most important challenges that they are facing today," he added. “Complete delivery and security for every application — this is the heart of this converged platform.”

The new F5 application delivery and security platform can be served up to enterprises operating premises-based hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructures. The platform gives users analytics and insights, single policy, unified management across all locations, and fully programmable data planes for automated deployment, as well as full lifecycle automation, the Seattle-based company said.

Bringing together the three pieces into one platform is important right now because of how fragmented the security space has become, Chuck Herrin, F5's field CISO for API security, told CRN at the event.

"I think the main message for defenders is, let's start with your app, but let's start with what you're trying to do from a business value perspective, and then we can align the right resources and tools that you need … We have the capability to literally secure and run and deliver any app, in any API, anywhere," Herrin said. "One single dashboard where I can see all this stuff. That's all I want as a defender."

The Next Generation of ADCs

The application delivery and security platform announcement builds on the company's launch earlier this month of its next-generation application delivery control strategy for the AI era, or “ADC 3.0.” The strategy, the company said, 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.

The market is starting to need next-generation ADCs, or the convergence of delivery and security functionalities in a single software stack, F5 President and CEO François Locoh-Donou told CRN.

"The ability to deploy that software stack in hardware, software or software as a service, no other company has done, and so we're seeing really increased momentum at F5 with our partners, because customers are looking for the company that can deliver and secure all [their] apps. 'I don't want to have 17 vendors to do that. I don't want to have a different company because I'm in the cloud or I'm in a data center.'" he said.

Many F5 customers today are using F5’s three core products across different buying units. Big IP is being used by networking and data center security administrators, while NGINX is used by developers, said Todd Hathaway, global head of AI security and cyber innovation for solution provider giant and F5 partner World Wide Technology (WWT).

But F5’s ADC 3.0 strategy and bringing together BIG-IP, distributed cloud services, and NGINX technology into one platform will give administrators a better, simplified user experience, said Hathaway.

"[Users] are able to consume F5 products the same way, regardless of the type of consumption they need to do," he said.