F5 Collaborates with Intel to Simplify the Security and Delivery of AI Services

Rhea-AI Summary

F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) has announced a collaboration with Intel to enhance the security and delivery of AI services. The joint solution combines F5's NGINX Plus with Intel's OpenVINO toolkit and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) to provide robust protection, scalability, and performance for AI inference.

Key features of this collaboration include:

• NGINX Plus managing traffic, ensuring high availability, and providing active health checks
• OpenVINO toolkit optimizing AI model inference
• Intel IPUs offloading infrastructure services to free up resources
• Enhanced security through SSL termination and mTLS encryption

This solution is particularly beneficial for edge applications, content delivery networks, and distributed microservices deployments. It aims to enable enterprises to securely deliver AI services with improved simplicity and performance at scale.

Positive

• Collaboration with Intel to enhance AI service security and delivery
• Integration of NGINX Plus with Intel's OpenVINO toolkit and IPUs for improved AI inference performance
• Potential for increased scalability and efficiency in AI deployments
• Enhanced security features including SSL termination and mTLS encryption
• Solution targets high-growth areas like edge applications, video analytics, and IoT

Negative

• None.

Insights

Tech Expert

F5's collaboration with Intel marks a significant step in enhancing AI infrastructure. The integration of NGINX Plus with Intel's OpenVINO toolkit and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) addresses critical challenges in AI deployment. This solution optimizes AI inference, a key bottleneck in many AI applications, potentially accelerating AI adoption across industries.

The use of IPUs to offload infrastructure tasks is particularly noteworthy. This approach could significantly improve performance by freeing up CPU resources for AI computations. For edge computing and IoT applications, where low latency is crucial, this could be a game-changer. However, the real-world performance gains and cost-effectiveness of this solution compared to GPU-based alternatives remain to be seen.

Security Analyst

The security aspects of this collaboration are compelling. F5's NGINX Plus brings robust security features like SSL termination and mTLS encryption to AI deployments. This addresses a critical concern in AI adoption: protecting sensitive data and models from unauthorized access or tampering. The reverse proxy functionality of NGINX Plus also adds a layer of security by hiding the internal network structure.

However, it's important to note that while this solution enhances security, it's not a silver bullet. Organizations will still need to implement comprehensive security strategies, including data encryption at rest, access controls and regular security audits. The effectiveness of this solution in mitigating AI-specific security threats, such as model inversion attacks or adversarial examples, isn't explicitly addressed and may require additional measures.

Financial Analyst

While this collaboration positions F5 favorably in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market, its immediate financial impact may be F5's stock (NASDAQ: FFIV) has been relatively stable and this announcement alone is unlikely to cause significant movement. However, long-term implications could be substantial if the solution gains traction.

The partnership with Intel, a major player in the tech industry, lends credibility to F5's AI capabilities and could open doors to new market segments. This could potentially diversify F5's revenue streams, which have traditionally been focused on application delivery and security. Investors should monitor adoption rates and any subsequent impact on F5's revenue from AI-related services. It's also worth noting that this move puts F5 in indirect competition with cloud giants offering AI services, which could present both opportunities and challenges.

Enhancing the protection and performance of enterprise AI inference solutions with F5 NGINX Plus, Intel OpenVINO, and Intel IPUs

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced it is bringing robust application security and delivery capabilities to AI deployments powered by Intel. This new joint solution combines industry-leading security and traffic management from F5’s NGINX Plus offering with the cutting-edge optimization and performance of the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) to deliver superior protection, scalability, and performance for advanced AI inference.

As organizations increasingly adopt AI to power intelligent applications and workflows, efficient and secure AI inference becomes critical. This need is addressed by combining the OpenVINO toolkit—which optimizes and accelerates AI model inference—with F5 NGINX Plus, providing robust traffic management and security.

The OpenVINO toolkit simplifies the optimization of models from almost any framework to enable a write-once, deploy-anywhere approach. This toolkit is essential for developers aiming to create scalable and efficient AI solutions with minimal code changes.

F5 NGINX Plus enhances the security and reliability of these AI models. Acting as a reverse proxy, NGINX Plus manages traffic, ensures high availability, and provides active health checks. It also facilitates SSL termination and mTLS encryption, safeguarding communications between applications and AI models without compromising performance.

To further boost performance, Intel IPUs offload infrastructure services from the host CPU, freeing up resources for AI model servers. The IPUs efficiently manage infrastructure tasks, opening up resources to enhance the scalability and performance of both NGINX Plus and OpenVINO™ Model Servers (OVMS).

This integrated solution is particularly beneficial for edge applications, such as video analytics and IoT, where low latency and high performance are crucial. By running NGINX Plus on the Intel IPU, the solution helps ensure rapid and reliable responses, making it ideal for content delivery networks and distributed microservices deployments.

“Teaming up with Intel empowers us to push the boundaries of AI deployment. This collaboration highlights our commitment to driving innovation and delivers a secure, reliable, and scalable AI inference solution that will enable enterprises to securely deliver AI services at speed. Our combined solution ensures that organizations can harness the power of AI with superior performance and security,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Technology Officer at F5.

“Leveraging the cutting-edge infrastructure acceleration of Intel IPUs and the OpenVINO toolkit alongside F5 NGINX Plus can help enable enterprises to realize innovative AI inference solutions with improved simplicity, security, and performance at scale for multiple vertical markets and workloads,” said Pere Monclus, Chief Technology Officer, Network and Edge Group of Intel.

The solution is now available. For more information, visit f5.com/intel. In addition, a companion blog from F5 CTO Kunal Anand provides further insight on this offering.

About F5

F5 is a multicloud application security and delivery company committed to bringing a better digital world to life. F5 partners with the world’s largest, most advanced organizations to secure every app—on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. F5 enables businesses to continuously stay ahead of threats while delivering exceptional, secure digital experiences for their customers. For more information, go to f5.com. (NASDAQ: FFIV)

You can also follow @F5 on X (Twitter) or visit us on LinkedIn and Facebook to learn about F5, its partners, and technologies.

F5, NGINX, and NGINX Plus are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Source: F5, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240828683915/en/

Jenna Becker

F5

(415) 857-2864

j.becker@f5.com

Holly Lancaster

WE Communications

(415) 547-7054

hluka@we-worldwide.com

Source: F5, Inc.

FAQ

What is the purpose of F5's collaboration with Intel for AI services?

F5's collaboration with Intel aims to simplify the security and delivery of AI services by combining F5's NGINX Plus with Intel's OpenVINO toolkit and IPUs, enhancing protection, scalability, and performance for AI inference solutions.

How does the F5 and Intel solution improve AI inference performance?

The solution improves AI inference performance by using Intel's OpenVINO toolkit to optimize AI model inference, while F5's NGINX Plus manages traffic and ensures high availability. Intel IPUs offload infrastructure services, freeing up resources for AI model servers.

What security features does the F5 FFIV and Intel AI solution offer?

The F5 FFIV and Intel AI solution offers robust security features including SSL termination, mTLS encryption for secure communications between applications and AI models, and active health checks provided by NGINX Plus.

What types of applications can benefit from the F5 FFIV and Intel AI collaboration?

The F5 FFIV and Intel AI collaboration is particularly beneficial for edge applications, video analytics, IoT, content delivery networks, and distributed microservices deployments that require low latency and high performance.