F5 Unveils Industry’s First Converged Application Delivery and Security Platform for the Hybrid Multicloud Infrastructures of the AI Era

Rhea-AI Summary

F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) has unveiled the industry's first converged Application Delivery and Security Platform, marking the evolution to ADC 3.0. The platform integrates high-performance load balancing and traffic management with advanced app and API security capabilities in a single solution.

The platform addresses challenges in hybrid multicloud infrastructures, particularly focusing on AI-enabled applications. According to F5's upcoming 2025 report, 96% of organizations are deploying AI models, with an estimated 80% of all apps becoming AI-enabled within three years.

Key announcements include:

• F5 AI Gateway for streamlining LLM interactions
• AI assistant for NGINX One
• AI assistant for BIG-IP and iRules
• New VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade for high-performance computing

Positive

• First-to-market with converged ADC 3.0 platform
• Strong market positioning for AI-driven application growth
• Expansion of product portfolio with new AI-focused solutions
• Launch of high-performance VELOS hardware for AI workloads

Negative

• None.

Insights

Financial Analyst

F5's new Application Delivery and Security Platform represents a strategic evolution of their business model, positioning the company to capitalize on the convergence of application delivery and security in AI-driven environments. This platform addresses a critical market need as organizations struggle with the complexity, performance demands, and security challenges of AI applications across hybrid multicloud infrastructures.

The platform's convergence strategy delivers three key business advantages. First, it should drive higher revenue per customer by replacing multiple point solutions with a unified platform. Second, it creates stronger competitive differentiation against both traditional ADC vendors and cloud-native alternatives. Third, it increases customer switching costs by embedding F5 more deeply into critical application infrastructure.

F5's timing aligns with the accelerating AI adoption curve, with their research showing 96% of organizations deploying AI models. By estimating that 80% of applications will be AI-enabled within three years, F5 is positioning this platform as essential infrastructure for the next generation of enterprise applications.

The complementary product announcements further strengthen F5's strategy:

• The AI Gateway provides a critical bridge between applications and LLMs, potentially becoming a high-growth revenue stream as organizations standardize their AI infrastructure
• AI assistants for NGINX One and BIG-IP address the skills gap in managing complex infrastructure
• The new VELOS hardware targets high-margin service provider and large enterprise segments

This platform approach should accelerate F5's transition to subscription and SaaS revenue models while maintaining their high-margin hardware business for performance-critical workloads. The unified management across deployment models gives F5 a compelling hybrid cloud story that few competitors can match.

Technology Analyst

F5's Application Delivery and Security Platform represents a fundamental architectural shift in how application delivery infrastructure is designed for AI workloads. The platform's true innovation lies in its unified data plane architecture that processes both delivery and security functions in a single pass, eliminating the performance penalties and complexity that typically occur when these functions are chained together as separate services.

From a technical perspective, this convergence solves three critical challenges facing AI infrastructure:

• Latency reduction: By eliminating service chaining between traffic management and security functions, the platform significantly reduces the latency that would otherwise impact AI application performance
• Traffic visibility: The unified data plane provides complete visibility across all application traffic, enabling more effective security without sampling or blind spots
• Policy consistency: The platform maintains consistent policies across environments through a distributed control plane that synchronizes configurations regardless of deployment location

The F5 AI Gateway component provides specialized infrastructure for AI applications by implementing several technical innovations:

• Intelligent request routing between multiple LLM providers based on cost, performance, and capability parameters
• Content filtering and PII detection for both prompts and responses
• Caching of common LLM responses to reduce API costs and latency
• Request optimization to improve token efficiency

The new VELOS hardware addresses the extreme throughput requirements of AI training and inference workloads with custom FPGA acceleration for specific AI traffic patterns and 400Gbps interfaces that support the massive east-west traffic generated by distributed AI processing.

What separates F5's approach from cloud-native alternatives is their ability to maintain consistent security and delivery policies across diverse environments through a unified control plane, eliminating the policy fragmentation that typically occurs in hybrid deployments while still leveraging cloud-native constructs when deployed in those environments.

• F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform converges high-performance traffic management and advanced security capabilities.
• New solutions further enhance F5 platform with capabilities that reduce complexity, simplify operations, and strengthen security for every app.

 

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today at AppWorld, F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) introduced the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform, the industry’s first Application Delivery Controller (ADC) solution that fully converges high-performance load balancing and traffic management with advanced app and API security capabilities into a single platform. With this platform, F5 is delivering on the promise of a new generation of ADCs—ADC 3.0—purpose-built to meet the extraordinary demands of modern and AI-powered applications.

The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform converges high-performance load balancing and traffic management with advanced app and API security capabilities. (Graphic: Business Wire)

“AI is accelerating innovation, but also intensifying the high costs, crushing complexity, and escalating cyber risks that have IT and security teams in crisis,” said François Locoh-Donou, President and CEO of F5. “F5 stands alone in its ability to address the challenges of hybrid multicloud architectures. The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform represents a giant leap forward for organizations, enabling them to overcome complexity and unlock the full potential of AI.”

F5’s upcoming 2025 State of Application Strategy Report found that 96% of organizations are deploying AI models. F5 further estimates that, within three years, 80% of all apps will be AI enabled. AI is here, but most enterprises are ill-equipped to handle the massive amounts of data, complex traffic patterns, and new attack vectors that are inherent in AI applications.

The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform has been built to address these challenges and is the most complete ADC offering for enterprises operating hybrid multicloud infrastructures. It delivers:

• Complete delivery and security for every app in a single platform that simplifies management for IT and security teams.
• Deployment anywhere in any form factor to run seamlessly across today’s diverse IT environments.
• Single policy, unified management across all locations to reduce complexity and improve efficiency.
• Rich analytics and insights that are relevant and actionable to improve performance and strengthen the security of today’s complex applications.
• Fully programmable data planes that enable automated deployment and custom functionality so organizations can effectively adapt to changing needs.
• Full lifecycle automation that allows teams to focus on delivering innovation and stop drowning in maintenance tasks.

The platform is API-driven and enables consistent policies for every app, in every environment, across all form factors. The product of years of investment and innovation, the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform operates seamlessly across high-performance hardware in on-premises data centers, next-generation software in virtualized and hybrid environments, and SaaS for cloud-native environments.

The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform converges what are currently point solutions to address critical needs such as high-performance load balancing, multicloud networking, full web app and API security, and AI gateway capabilities.

“AI is driving innovation while exposing businesses to unprecedented levels of complexity and risk,” said Christopher Rodriguez, Research Director, Cybersecurity and Trust at IDC. “The convergence of application delivery and security capabilities will be indispensable for companies striving to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving landscape.”

Learn more about the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform at f5.com.

Unveiling New Platform Solutions and Innovation

F5 also announced several new solutions and capabilities as part of a commitment to continued innovation in the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform. These solutions enable F5 customers to leverage the power of AI to reduce complexity, simplify operations, and strengthen security postures for every app. These innovations include:

• F5 AI Gateway: F5 AI Gateway is now generally available for organizations looking to streamline interactions between applications, APIs, and large language models (LLMs) and drive wider enterprise AI adoption. This powerful containerized solution optimizes performance, observability, and protection capabilities—all leading to reduced costs. AI Gateway gives operations and security teams a seamless path to adopting AI services through significantly improved data output quality and a superior user experience.
• AI assistant for F5 NGINX One: Following last year’s release of an AI assistant for F5 Distributed Cloud Services, F5 is bringing this capability to NGINX One starting today. The tool is powered by the F5 AI Data Fabric and serves as an intelligent partner to stretched NetOps, SecOps, DevOps, and platform ops teams. The AI assistant for NGINX One uses a natural language interface to streamline operations and improve ROI by helping teams configure and optimize application delivery, preemptively address threats, and identify anomalies before they impact production.
• AI assistant for F5 BIG-IP and iRules code generation and explanation: Later this year, F5 will also release an AI assistant for BIG-IP to bring a new level of automation and intelligence to iRules. Customers will be able to automate the creation, maintenance, and optimization of iRules while reducing the time and resources required to effectively manage traffic and securely deliver apps. By leveraging AI, the system generates optimized, validated iRules that adhere to best practices. This improves accuracy while reducing errors, ensuring a reliable and consistent experience for organizations.
• F5 VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade: F5 is introducing powerful new additions to its VELOS product line, giving service providers and large enterprises a unified and customizable solution to optimize data-intensive workloads of AI and other modern apps. The new VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 400-Gbps blade scale to multi-terabits of throughput, suitable for the highest performance NEBS-compliance standards and supporting the most demanding 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) services. The F5 VELOS product line provides optimized data packet routing, granular security, load balancing, and low latency, enabling the data ingest and real-time data needs that AI solutions require.

Supporting Resources

• Resource: Introducing the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform
• Resource: The Application Delivery Top 10
• Resource: F5 AI Gateway
• Press Release: F5’s Multi-terabit VELOS Hardware Powers AI Workloads for Service Providers and Large Enterprises
• Blog: Introducing the AI Assistant for F5 NGINX One
• Blog: A New Generation of ADCs for the AI Era

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, BIG-IP, VELOS, iRules, NGINX, and AppWorld 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/20250226596902/en/

Dan Sorensen

F5

(650) 228-4842

d.sorensen@f5.com

Holly Lancaster

WE Communications

(415) 547-705

hluka@we-worldwide.com

Source: F5, Inc.

FAQ

What is F5's new Application Delivery and Security Platform for FFIV investors?

It's the industry's first converged ADC solution combining load balancing, traffic management, and advanced security in one platform, designed for AI-era applications and hybrid multicloud infrastructures.

How many organizations are deploying AI models according to F5's 2025 report?

96% of organizations are deploying AI models, with F5 estimating 80% of all apps will be AI-enabled within three years.

What new AI products did F5 (FFIV) announce at AppWorld?

F5 announced AI Gateway, AI assistant for NGINX One, AI assistant for BIG-IP and iRules, and new VELOS hardware products for AI workloads.

What capabilities does F5's new Application Delivery Platform offer for FFIV customers?

The platform offers complete delivery and security, deployment flexibility, unified management, rich analytics, programmable data planes, and full lifecycle automation across all environments.