F5 Gives Enterprises Superior Application Control with BIG-IP Solutions for Amazon Web Services

F5’s new BIG-IP virtual solutions for Amazon Web Services (AWS) enable customers to extend their data centres to the cloud while keeping applications fast, secure, and available

F5 Networks, Inc. the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), introduced a BIG-IP virtual edition for AWS, which leverages F5’s complete portfolio of BIG-IP products for the AWS cloud. This announcement addresses organisations’ escalating demand to extend their data centre and applications to AWS, maintaining enterprise-class reliability, scale, security and performance.

“Enterprise customers have come to rely on BIG-IP’s strategic awareness that provides important information on how applications, resources and users interact in order to successfully deliver applications,” says Siva Mandalam, Director of Product Management and Product Marketing, Cloud and Virtualisation Solutions at F5. “Since BIG-IP for AWS will have equivalent features to physical BIG-IP devices, customers can apply the same level of control for their applications in AWS. With BIG-IP running in enterprise data centres and on AWS, customers can establish secure tunnels, burst to the cloud and control the application from end to end.”

The BIG-IP solution for AWS includes options for traffic management, global server load balancing, application firewall, web application acceleration and other advanced application delivery functions. With the new F5 offering:

• F5 ADN services operate seamlessly in the cloud – BIG-IP virtual editions are being made available to a growing number of customers seeking to leverage cloud offerings. Availability for AWS expands on F5’s broad support for virtualised and cloud environments based on vSphere, Hyper-V, Xen, and KVM.
• Enterprises can confidently take advantage of cloud resources – AWS customers can easily add F5’s market-leading availability, optimisation and security services to support cloud and hybrid deployment models.
• IT teams are able to easily scale application environments – Production and lab versions of BIG-IP virtual editions for AWS enable IT teams to move smoothly from testing and development into production to support essential business applications. Customers can leverage their existing BIG-IP configuration and policies and apply them to BIG-IP running on AWS.

“As enterprises consider which applications to move to the cloud, many customers have asked for the same advanced application control they have in their local data centres,” says Terry Wise, Head of Worldwide Partner Ecosystem at Amazon Web Services. “The BIG-IP solution for AWS enables enterprises to quickly move complex applications to AWS while maintaining high levels of service at a lower overall cost.”

“Enterprises want the flexibility and scale of cloud services, yet they can struggle with application complexity and sufficient control,” says Rohit Mehra, VP of Network Infrastructure at IDC. “The challenge lies in easily expanding IT’s service portfolio with cloud and hybrid capabilities while keeping the applications fast, secure, and available. BIG-IP’s native availability inside Amazon Web Services allows enterprises to deeply embed a strategic awareness of how applications behave in cloud adoption scenarios.”

Availability
BIG-IP solutions for AWS will be available for purchase by the end of calendar year 2012.