F5 Introduces AI Gateway to Manage and Secure Surging AI Traffic and Application Demands

Rhea-AI Summary

F5 has announced early access to its AI Gateway, a containerized solution designed to streamline interactions between applications, APIs, and large language models (LLMs). The solution addresses key enterprise challenges in AI adoption by optimizing performance, security, and cost management. According to F5's research, 75% of enterprises are implementing AI.

The AI Gateway provides security policy enforcement, semantic caching to reduce operational costs, streamlined integration processes, and optimized load balancing. It can be deployed in any cloud or data center and integrates with F5's NGINX and BIG-IP platforms, offering protection against OWASP Top Ten LLM Application risks and enabling customizable security controls.

Positive

• Introduces new revenue stream through AI Gateway product
• Expands market presence in growing AI infrastructure segment
• Offers cost reduction benefits through semantic caching and intelligent traffic routing
• Integrates with existing F5 products (NGINX and BIG-IP platforms)

Negative

• Product is only in early access phase, not fully launched
• Enters highly competitive AI infrastructure market

Insights

Tech Expert

F5's AI Gateway represents a significant strategic pivot into the AI infrastructure market, addressing critical enterprise needs in AI application deployment. The solution's key differentiators include semantic caching for cost reduction and integrated security features specifically designed for LLM applications. The platform's compatibility with F5's existing NGINX and BIG-IP solutions provides a compelling competitive advantage, offering seamless integration for current customers.

The timing is particularly strategic, as enterprises struggle with AI implementation challenges around security, cost management and regulatory compliance. With 75% of enterprises implementing AI, this solution addresses a rapidly growing market need. The semantic caching feature could significantly reduce operational costs by minimizing redundant LLM queries, while the security framework aligned with OWASP standards positions F5 as a leader in secure AI deployment.

Market Research Analyst

This product launch strengthens F5's market position in the rapidly evolving AI infrastructure space. The company is leveraging its established expertise in application delivery and security to address emerging AI-specific challenges. The endorsement from WorldTech IT's CTO validates the solution's practical benefits, particularly in cost savings and integration efficiency.

The market opportunity is substantial, as enterprises increasingly need specialized tools to manage AI workloads securely and efficiently. F5's approach of providing a unified platform for AI service management, combined with their existing customer base and distribution channels, positions them well to capture market share in this growing segment.

• Manages security for both users and providers of AI services, overseeing authentication and zero trust capabilities
• Prioritizes the consumption of AI services across teams, applications, and APIs
• Enables integrated automation with AI services and models from OpenAI, cloud providers, open source, and more

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) announced early access of F5 AI Gateway to streamline interactions between applications, APIs, and large language models (LLMs) driving enterprise AI adoption. This powerful containerized solution optimizes performance, observability, and protection capabilities—all leading to reduced costs. Integrated with F5’s portfolio, AI Gateway gives security and operations teams a seamless path to adopting AI services through significantly improved data output quality and a superior user experience.

According to F5’s State of AI Application Strategy Report, 75% of enterprises are implementing AI. Like countless modern applications, AI services are largely delivered and consumed via APIs. However, enterprises face many additional challenges in architecting and scaling AI-fluent apps and services. As an example, efficient operations require close monitoring of increasingly relevant metrics such as GPU compute costs and system responsiveness, as well as emerging regulatory compliance concerns.

“LLMs are unlocking new levels of productivity and enhanced user experiences for customers, but they also require oversight, deep inspection at inference-time, and defense against new types of threats,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Innovation Officer at F5. “By addressing these new requirements and integrating with F5’s trusted solutions for API traffic management, we’re enabling customers to confidently and efficiently deploy AI-powered applications in a massively larger threat landscape.”

Real-world AI solutions require optimized request, response, and prompt interactions across an entire data ecosystem. F5 AI Gateway observes, optimizes, and secures a vast number of user and automated variables to offer cost reductions, mitigate malicious threats, and ensure regulatory compliance.

F5 AI Gateway is designed to meet customers—and their apps—at the ideal place in their AI journey. It can be deployed in any cloud or data center and will natively integrate with F5’s NGINX and BIG-IP platforms to take advantage of F5’s leading app security and delivery services in traditional, multicloud, or edge deployments. In addition, the solution’s open extensibility enables organizations to develop and customize programmable security and controls enforced by F5 AI Gateway. These processes can be easily updated and applied dynamically to drive instant adherence to security policies and compliance mandates.

“AI-powered applications will become a cornerstone for nearly every business and organization in the coming years,” said Shari Lava, Senior Director, AI and Automation at IDC. “F5’s introduction of an AI gateway to its application stack of services enables its customers to have greater flexibility in how they build their AI application structure, but still have enhanced protection and model optimization.”

F5 AI Gateway:

• Delivers security and compliance policy enforcement with automated detection and remediation against the risks identified in the OWASP Top Ten for LLM Applications.
• Offloads duplicate tasks from LLMs with semantic caching, enhancing the user experience and reducing operations costs.
• Streamlines integration processes, allowing developers to focus on building out AI-powered applications rather than managing complex infrastructures.
• Optimizes load balancing, traffic routing, and rate limiting for local and third-party LLMs to maintain service availability and enhance performance.
• Provides a single API interface that developers can use to access their AI model of choice.

“F5’s AI Gateway is an integral part of our AI strategy,” said Austin Geraci, CTO of WorldTech IT. “With this technology, our customers are able to develop both internal and external-facing AI applications capable of handling a surge in queries without degradation to site and application performance. F5 brings leading app security and delivery capabilities to accelerate AI experiences at scale. With F5 AI Gateway, semantic caching and intelligent traffic routing alone represent significant cost savings, and the unification of F5 services will save customers hundreds of hours of integration work.”

Supporting Resources

• F5 AI Gateway product page
• F5 AI Gateway overview
• F5 AI Gateway blog post

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 or visit us on LinkedIn and Facebook to learn about F5, its partners, and technologies. F5, BIG-IP, and NGINX are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. 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/20241112358635/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 F5's new AI Gateway product (FFIV)?

F5's AI Gateway is a containerized solution that manages and secures AI traffic between applications, APIs, and large language models (LLMs), offering security, performance optimization, and cost reduction features.

How does F5's AI Gateway (FFIV) reduce operational costs?

The AI Gateway reduces costs through semantic caching, which offloads duplicate tasks from LLMs, and intelligent traffic routing that optimizes resource usage and enhances performance.

What security features does F5's AI Gateway (FFIV) provide?

It provides automated detection and remediation against OWASP Top Ten LLM Application risks, security policy enforcement, and customizable security controls.

Where can F5's AI Gateway (FFIV) be deployed?

F5's AI Gateway can be deployed in any cloud or data center and integrates natively with F5's NGINX and BIG-IP platforms for traditional, multicloud, or edge deployments.