F5’s Multi-terabit VELOS Hardware Powers AI Workloads for Service Providers and Large Enterprises

Rhea-AI Summary

F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) has announced significant additions to its VELOS product line, introducing the VELOS CX1610 6-Tbps chassis and BX520 400-Gbps blade. These new hardware solutions are designed to support AI workloads for service providers and large enterprises.

The enhanced VELOS system offers impressive capabilities including 6 Tbps of high-speed L4 throughput, 6.4 billion concurrent connections, and 80 million L4 connections per second for firewall security. Both new components are already deployed in a production 5G network with a Tier-1 U.S. telecommunications provider.

The system features integrated load balancing, 5G workload support, and comprehensive security offerings including BIG-IP AFM for DDoS protection, BIG-IP DNS scaling up to 100 million responses per second, and BIG-IP Advanced WAF for application defense. General availability is expected during Q3 FY2025.

Positive

• New hardware achieves 6 Tbps throughput capacity
• Already deployed with Tier-1 U.S. telecom provider
• Supports 6.4 billion concurrent connections
• Handles 80 million L4 connections per second
• Scales to 100 million DNS responses per second

Negative

• General availability delayed until Q3 FY2025
• availability for new hardware components

Insights

Network Solutions Expert

F5's introduction of the VELOS CX1610 6-Tbps chassis and BX520 400-Gbps blade represents a strategic hardware advancement targeting the intersection of AI infrastructure and service provider networks. The 6 Tbps throughput and 6.4 billion concurrent connections address a critical bottleneck in AI deployments: the need to move massive datasets between compute nodes with minimal latency while maintaining security.

This hardware launch signals F5's evolution beyond traditional application delivery to position itself as an essential infrastructure provider for AI workloads. The timing is significant as organizations face increasing network challenges when scaling AI initiatives. Most AI infrastructure discussions focus on GPU availability, but data movement between compute resources often becomes the limiting factor in production environments.

The early adoption by a Tier-1 U.S. telecommunications provider provides important market validation. Telecom providers represent an ideal beachhead market given their dual needs for supporting both internal AI initiatives and delivering high-performance connectivity for enterprise AI services through 5G Fixed Wireless Access.

From a competitive standpoint, F5 is leveraging its established position in application delivery to counter both traditional networking vendors and cloud providers offering managed AI infrastructure. The unified platform approach (combining security, availability, and management) differentiates F5 from point solutions while addressing the operational complexity that often derails large-scale AI deployments.

For investors, this represents F5's strategic pivot toward higher-growth markets while leveraging its core competencies. The hardware launch complements F5's software and SaaS portfolio, potentially creating pull-through opportunities across their product line as customers standardize on F5 for AI-related networking needs.

The 80 million L4 connections per second for firewall security is particularly relevant as AI applications face increasing attack surfaces. Organizations implementing generative AI face unique security challenges that traditional solutions struggle to address at scale.

Financial Analyst

F5's new VELOS hardware represents a calculated strategic bet on the AI infrastructure market, potentially opening a multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity amid the broader AI deployment wave. While F5 has been transitioning toward software and services (which reached 72% of revenue in recent quarters), this hardware play acknowledges the physical infrastructure demands that AI creates even in cloud-centric environments.

The timing aligns with the projected 25-30% CAGR in AI-related networking infrastructure through 2028, as organizations move beyond experimental AI to production deployments requiring purpose-built hardware. F5's focus on service providers is financially shrewd - these customers typically make larger, more concentrated purchases compared to enterprise accounts, potentially improving sales efficiency metrics.

From a margin perspective, this move presents a mixed outlook. Hardware typically carries 10-15 percentage points lower gross margins than F5's software business. However, the specialized nature of these high-performance components and their integration with F5's software stack may command premium pricing, partially offsetting margin pressure. More importantly, these hardware deployments often drive attached software and subscription sales with recurring revenue characteristics.

The early deployment with a Tier-1 U.S. telecommunications provider represents a significant reference customer that could accelerate sales cycles with similar accounts. Telecommunications providers are expected to increase capital expenditures by 15-20% specifically for AI-related infrastructure over the next three years, creating a favorable spending environment despite broader economic uncertainties.

Competitively, F5 faces pressure from both networking giants (Cisco, Juniper) and specialized AI infrastructure providers. However, F5's differentiation through integrated security and application services positions them uniquely at the convergence of networking and application delivery - a critical intersection for AI workloads.

The delayed availability until Q3 FY2025 creates near-term revenue timing risk, but also allows F5 to capture design wins in current budget planning cycles while refining the product based on early customer feedback.

• High-volume throughput and performance of new F5 VELOS CX1610 6-Tbps chassis and BX520 400-Gbps blade securely support organizations’ ambitious AI growth initiatives.
• Unified approach to application delivery scales industry-leading availability, management, and security services on one platform to reduce complexity.
• VELOS hardware complements F5’s software and SaaS solution portfolio to optimize and secure every app and API in all types of IT environments.

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today at AppWorld, F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) announced powerful new additions to the F5 VELOS product line, giving service providers and large enterprises a unified and customizable solution to optimize modern applications required for AI, safeguard workloads, and reduce downtime across single and multi-tenant application environments.

AI applications are highly distributed, with vast amounts of valuable data traveling in complex patterns. As organizations accelerate their use of AI, high-performance traffic management and advanced security are critical. Part of the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform, VELOS reduces complexity of large-scale AI deployments by converging availability, management, and security capabilities.

With the new VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 400-Gbps blade, the solution scales to multi-terabits of throughput, suitable for the highest performance NEBS-compliance standards and supporting the most demanding 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services.

For service providers, VELOS provides 6 Tbps of high-speed L4 throughput for FWA deployments, along with an unmatched 6.4 billion concurrent connections (400 million per blade) for exceptional scalability, and 80 million L4 connections per second for firewall security. Both the VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade are already deployed in a production 5G network with a Tier-1 U.S. telecommunications provider.

“Making AI practical and simple for end users and practitioners is a massive undertaking, and legacy infrastructure is becoming a barrier for service providers and large enterprises seeking to implement AI-enhanced apps,” said Maggie Stringfellow, VP and GM, BIG-IP, F5. “With integrated load balancing and support for 5G workloads, VELOS optimizes performance, streamlines operations, and secures applications in support of hybrid multicloud environments, enabling apps, APIs, and large language models with the services required to unlock the true potential of AI.”

Delivers Comprehensive Performance for AI Workloads

F5 VELOS offers a fully integrated and tested system, providing scalable, reliable performance for any application. Organizations no longer need to engineer their individual application stacks with different combinations of server hardware and operating software, hypervisors, and ADCs. Moreover, VELOS dynamically allocates resources based on workload demands, optimizing traffic flow and ensuring AI models receive the data processing power they need without excess lag. VELOS addresses the increasingly complex and large data traffic volume demands of AI and data-intensive applications, maintaining low latency and consistent throughput for data flows. As a result, end users enjoy a vastly superior experience with AI applications.

Protects any Application from Sophisticated Threats

VELOS defends applications with F5’s comprehensive security offerings. It protects against today’s expanding threat landscape while maintaining optimal performance, enabled by offloading to FPGAs. With its 5 million L4 connections per second per blade, VELOS is primed to deliver unsurpassed firewall performance. Taking a unified, layered approach to security, F5’s extensible architecture supports numerous use cases. Highlights include:

• BIG-IP AFM protects networks against incoming threats like DDoS attacks via machine learning, stress monitoring, dynamic signatures, and real-time attack mitigation.
• BIG-IP DNS can hyperscale up to 100 million responses per second to manage rapid increases in DNS queries. With multicore scalability, DNS Express, and IP Anycast integration, DNS delivery can handle millions of DNS queries and ensures top application performance for users.
• BIG-IP Advanced WAF defends apps, APIs, and data against the most prevalent attacks such as zero-day vulnerabilities, app-layer DoS attacks, threat campaigns, application takeover, and bots.

Supports Hybrid Deployments and Enhanced Automation

VELOS enables efficient management and scaling of application delivery services to meet increasing demands. It seamlessly bridges the traditional services gap between legacy and modern application architectures by supporting both F5 BIG-IP and BIG-IP Next cloud-native tenants, further realizing the promise of microservices-based architectures. With BIG-IP Next, VELOS enables seamless API integration with cloud providers, promoting consistent application delivery. In addition, supported integrations with Ansible, Terraform, and Kubernetes take advantage of automated deployment workflows, simplifying continuous integration and deployment in hybrid environments. Unifying application delivery and security with modern automation capabilities, organizations can reduce app deployment times from weeks to minutes and significantly improve operational efficiency.

“Service providers and large enterprises are experiencing increased requirements from emerging AI applications, broadband subscriber traffic, and overall application demands, leading to a critical need for increased bandwidth, low latency, and advanced application networking and security capabilities,” said Paul Nicholson, Research VP, Cloud and Datacenter Networks, IDC. “F5 VELOS offers a scalable, high-performance, and consolidated solution that brings together multiple services required into a single solution, such as DNS, firewall, DDoS, CGNAT, TCP, and video optimization capabilities. Performance and flexibility in the datacenter are of strategic importance to enhanced user and emerging AI-based services, while delivering key resilience and fault tolerance to meet business objectives.”

Availability

F5 VELOS is now available as a 16-RU (VELOS CX1610) and a 4-RU (CX410) chassis, each with support for 100 Gbps and 400 Gbps blades, with limited availability for the VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade. General availability for the new offerings is anticipated during the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. For additional product-related availability details, please contact F5.

About F5

F5 is a multicloud application delivery and security 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, AppWorld, BIG-IP, BIG-IP Next, AFM, Advanced WAF, and VELOS 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/20250226100791/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 are the key performance metrics of F5's new VELOS hardware (FFIV)?

The new VELOS hardware delivers 6 Tbps throughput, 6.4 billion concurrent connections, and 80 million L4 connections per second for firewall security.

When will F5's new VELOS CX1610 and BX520 blade (FFIV) be generally available?

General availability is anticipated during the third quarter of fiscal year 2025.

How does F5's VELOS (FFIV) support AI workload optimization?

VELOS dynamically allocates resources based on workload demands, optimizing traffic flow and ensuring AI models receive necessary data processing power while maintaining low latency.

What security features are included in F5's new VELOS system (FFIV)?

VELOS includes BIG-IP AFM for DDoS protection, BIG-IP DNS for query management, and BIG-IP Advanced WAF for defending against app-layer attacks and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Which major telecom provider is already using F5's new VELOS hardware (FFIV)?

The VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade are deployed in a production 5G network with a Tier-1 U.S. telecommunications provider.