F5’s portfolio of intelligent application services and flexible deployment models positions customers’ security, mobility, and cloud initiatives for success
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The Synthesis architectural vision builds on signature F5® technologies like TMOS® and ScaleN™, adding new elements to extend the reach of intelligent application services further into IT infrastructures and cloud environments. As a culmination of F5 innovations to date, today’s announcement marks a significant step toward enabling customers to realize the goal of delivering a software defined data center with SDAS. SDAS complement existing layer 2-3 network and compute-focused efforts by filling the gap in support for critical layer 4-7 services. A comprehensive set of management and control plane APIs ensures integration and interoperability with SDN and virtualization systems, as well as in the cloud.
An all-active and multi-tenant application-driven services fabric enables a flexible model for provisioning and orchestrating services that can be extended from the data center to the cloud. Combined with new licensing options, F5 Synthesis reduces the costs of delivering services so customers can increase the value of a rich and extensible set of services for all devices, networks, and applications. In support of this vision, F5 is introducing a tiered licensing model to consolidate purchasing options for its solutions and significantly reduce customer costs when application services are deployed in concert versus individually. For additional information on F5’s new pricing options, please go to: http://www.f5.com/pdf/licensing/good-better-best-licensing-overview.pdf
F5’s high-performance services fabric scales to meet the needs of the most demanding environments. Deployed across hardware, software, or cloud infrastructures, the Synthesis ScaleN services fabric can support up to 1.28 million instances in a combination of administrative domains and virtual instances with a combined throughput of 20.5 TB and connection capacity of 9.2 billion—more than three times the capacity needed to manage a connection from every Internet user today across the globe.1 A centralized management system enables the automated discovery, topology, and provisioning of service fabric instances, reducing the operational overhead associated with manual processes and enabling rapid provisioning and scale of the most comprehensive set of application services available today across device, network, and application domains. To realize the economy of scale required to enable a “no application left behind” strategy, automated provisioning and orchestration is a must. F5 Synthesis enables enterprises and service providers to seamlessly manage, scale, and automate application services with BIG-IQ™. Complementing the services fabric’s multi-tenancy is BIG-IQ’s multi-tenant approach to management, enabling organizations to move toward realizing IT as a Service (ITaaS) and the operational benefits of a software defined data center.
To further provide tangible context for customers on the company’s vision, F5 is also introducing a collection of reference architectures focused on business solutions designed to help organizations accelerate time to market and address some of IT’s most pervasive challenges. As an example, the company issued a separate press release today focused on helping organizations defend against DDoS attacks.
KEY BENEFITS
SUPPORTING QUOTES
“F5 is highly aware of the shifts transforming the Application Delivery
Controller (ADC) market, based on ongoing dialogue with customers,
partners, and industry influencers. With Synthesis, we are better
aligning around the priorities and deployment preferences of enterprises
and service providers to best address the direction IT is
headed—billions of users, trillions of internet-connected devices, and
millions of essential applications. To support this growth, we view the
ability to massively scale services, elastically provision resources,
and interoperate with a variety of open and proprietary platforms as
non-negotiable. This announcement reflects our belief that F5 is ideally
positioned to help organizations take advantage of today’s exciting and
disruptive technologies, without prohibitive complexity or tradeoffs in
application performance and security.”
“Under the Synthesis umbrella, F5 is making a number of thoughtful
improvements to its go-to-market efforts. The company’s approach to SDAS
fits in step with the broader industry’s focus on SDN topics. With an
emphasis on fabric-based networking, programmable application services,
simplified purchasing options, and dedicated reference architectures, F5
is evolving its sales and marketing practices to better align with
organizations’ need to rapidly and efficiently deploy, provision, and
prioritize IT services.”
“Changing application environments, user expectations and network
services demand that network architects expand their thinking to ensure
that the network supports new and changing business requirements. They
need to address five dimensions—users, applications, devices, location
and activity in a framework that best supports enterprise applications,
both internally and externally hosted.”
Gartner, Inc., “Focus on
Five Dimensions of Network Design to Improve Performance and Save
Money,”
AVAILABILITY
F5 Synthesis and software defined application services are supported by a growing number of F5 solutions. Contact your local F5 sales office for availability of F5 technologies in specific countries.
SUPPORTING RESOURCES
F5 executive videos, white papers, datasheets, diagrams, and additional information on Synthesis and specific reference architectures are available through http://synthesis.f5.com/.
Additional commentary on today’s news is available on F5 DevCentral™ at: https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/f5-synthesis-the-time-is-right
ABOUT F5
F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) provides solutions for an application world. F5 helps organizations seamlessly scale cloud, data center, and software defined networking (SDN) deployments to successfully deliver applications to anyone, anywhere, at any time. F5 solutions broaden the reach of IT through an open, extensible framework and a rich partner ecosystem of leading technology and data center orchestration vendors. This approach lets customers pursue the infrastructure model that best fits their needs over time. The world’s largest businesses, service providers, government entities, and consumer brands rely on F5 to stay ahead of cloud, security, and mobility trends. For more information, go to f5.com.
You can also follow @f5networks on Twitter or visit us on Facebook for more information about F5, its partners, and technologies. For a complete listing of F5 community sites, please visit www.f5.com/news-press-events/web-media/community.html.
F5, F5 Synthesis, software defined application services, SDAS, BIG-IP,
BIG-IQ, TMOS, LineRate, ScaleN,
This press release may contain forward looking statements relating to
future events or future financial performance that involve risks and
uncertainties. Such statements can be identified by terminology such as
"may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes,"
"estimates," "predicts," "potential," or "continue," or the negative of
such terms or comparable terms. These statements are only predictions
and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in
these statements based upon a number of factors including those
identified in the company's filings with the
1 Based on Internet user population of 2.4B: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
a.moran@f5.com
or
troy.edwards@porternovelli.com
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