F5 Distributed Cloud Platform
Cloud-native networking, security, and app management
The F5 Distributed Cloud Platform delivers improved functionality, advanced security controls, and more simplified operations than native services from cloud providers.
Overview
A cloud-based platform that is purpose-built to support distributed applications across multi-cloud, on-premises and edge environments.
Challenges
As applications evolve through microservices and increased dependencies on APIs, new highly distributed architectures are introducing greater complexities, costs, and increased risks.
Excessive cost
Multiple appliances, software, and connectivity services must be deployed and managed to deliver apps.
Operational complexity
Services with different APIs, policy, and observability require investments in automation.
Siloed teams and processes
Difficult to align DevOps, NetOps, and SecOps across service provisioning and security using ticket-based workflows.
Poor app performance
Traditional CDNs and hub-spoke networks were not designed for immersive or large-scale SaaS apps.
Inconsistent security
Apps deployed across distributed environments are not equally protected.
Lack of visibility
Multiple toolsets used by different teams provide a disjointed view of operations.
Why Distributed Cloud Platform?
A multi-tenant platform with no cloud provider integrations or third-party services, for a 70% cost savings.
Up to 12x reduction in time-to-market with an integrated, consistent set of SaaS-based services across any environment.
Self-service with separation of duties allows developers, DevOps, NetOps, and SecOps to openly collaborate.
Applications and workloads can be deployed closer to users on the F5 Global Network.
Advanced AI/ML mitigates threats and enforces security policies across distributed environments.
A single portal shared by NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps for holistic view of app security and performance.
Platform Overview
Connects, secures, and manages apps in the cloud, on-prem, at the edge, or in the F5 Global Network.
A modern SaaS-based platform that consolidates multiple services across monolithic and microservices apps to simplify app management, security, and network connectivity across distributed infrastructure.
SaaS-based platform to simplify operations and life cycle management.
High-performance network for faster workload connectivity.
Complete network and namespace isolation.
Advanced telemetry across infrastructure, apps, and network. |
Broad Platform and Cloud Provider Support
Distributed Cloud Services can be delivered to apps running on any platform on any public/private cloud. Connect and secure apps running in VMs, containers, bare metal, or serverless.
Service Discovery and Service Mesh Integrations
Supports multiple service discovery protocols simultaneously: Consul, Kubernetes, and DNS work out of the box. Istio or Linkerd service mesh can integrate with a Distributed Cloud Services ingress/egress gateway.
Automation, Alerting, and SIEM Integration
F5’s native Terraform provider, vesctl CLI tool, and public APIs address the automation needs of app teams. Support for tools like Opsgenie or Slack for alerting and Splunk or Datadog for SIEM simplify life for DevOps and SecOps teams.
Ways to Deploy
Distributed Cloud Services deliver application management, networking, and security services closer to workloads and can be deployed in public and private clouds, on-premises data centers, and edge sites with centralized management via a SaaS-based console.
Manage and protect application workloads hosted in AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Manage and protect application workloads from any of the points of presence (PoPs) on the F5 global network.
Manage and protect applications at the data center and edge sites.
Resources
ANALYST REPORT
The Third Wave of Cloud Networks: Multi-Cloud Networking Market Growth Drivers
"We are excited to work with F5 to architect an unprecedented edge computing environment across our 5G network. F5 has demonstrated that it solves critical operational challenges within existing telco cloud service offerings, increasing operator efficiency and revenue streams while delivering a cloud-native experience that will drive developer adoption."
Keiichi Makizono
SVP & CIO, SoftBank Corp.