BIG-IP v11 Unifying Applications!

Anil Pochiraju 
MD, India & SAARC 
F5 Networks

Users today expect hassle-free, straightforward access to all things anytime and anywhere. Expectations sound simple but have led to heighten pressure to align IT with changing customer conditions in business. Considering this, F5 has announced the release of its powerful BIG-IP version 11 software in July 2011. "This new version is designed to meet the dynamic data center requirements of IT infrastructures that are increasingly required to be more efficient and agile. BIG-IP version 11 speeds provisioning of services on an application-by-application basis, aligns IT functions and services more closely with business needs, and enables better visibility and reporting of IT resource utilization," informs Anil Pochiraju, Managing Director, India &  SAARC, F5 Networks.

F5's new application delivery controller provides a comprehensive view of users, applications, and the network, enabling IT teams to deploy and provision application services on a per-application basis as rapidly as they can provision virtual machines. BIG-IP v11 unifies all the necessary application delivery services, such as authentication, data protection and traffic management, into a logical framework, taking unified application delivery to the next level.

New features released enables faster application delivery through better overall application management. For instance, its iApps enables network services to be provisioned as quickly as virtual machines. This ensures an agile infrastructure that CIOs seek for their virtual data center and cloud architecture designs.

"BIG-IP v11 enables customers to take full advantage of F5's Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP) technology, combining virtualization and multi-tenancy capabilities to simultaneously run multiple instances of BIG-IP solutions on a single device," adds Pochiraju. 

New features also include integrated application security controls ensuring end-to-end security and scalability. The BIG-IP platform offers integrated access control services, an enhanced web application firewall, and new DNS infrastructure offload and scalability functions to automatically mitigate attacks. It provides protection against complex multilayer attacks by integrating security services from layer 2 through layer 7, and by using intelligence and context to apply the appropriate set of security measures for each threat.

Business benefits Vs target market vertical

Businesses today are offering a lot of applications today over the Internet to their end-users. These web applications have resulted in an increase in online transactions and data traffic. Also, as they take their business to different locations in the country, the availability and performance of these applications for users in remote locations becomes critical. "The delivery of these applications over mobile devices is also an area of focus for organizations today," he quips.

In such a scenario, organizations are looking for solutions that can provide the best end-user experience to their employees and customers to ensure that their business always has an edge and to minimize customer churn. They want the flexibility to scale and align IT infrastructure with changing business conditions, improve productivity and reduce CapEx and OpEx. Organizations also want to make sure that their security concerns are addressed as they need to ensure the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the data to protect brand equity/confidence.

"Our solutions would help them deploy scalable services on demand, and manage mobile access to data and services while keeping the applications and network secure from attacks. The solutions also ensure that applications, whether deployed in physical, virtual or cloud environments, are protected from multi-layer attacks, and available and running at peak performance in an application centric architecture," says Pochiraju.

Security aspects of the application delivery are handled by the F5 appliance which sits within the network so that the organization can ensure that security overheads do not affect the performance of applications at the data center. This, in turn, ensures that the end-user gets a secure, optimum highly available user experience.

Channel route...

F5 strongly believes that channel partners are the key to its success in India and globally. Therefore, it has a strong ecosystem of channel partners in the country taking F5's solutions to customers. "We have comprehensive sales and sales engineering training programmes, designed to illustrate the value of F5 solutions and enable channel partners to effectively address the application delivery needs of their customers."

We recently introduced the UNITY Partner Programme in Asia-Pacific. The programme defines clear, measurable expectations and protects the investments of partners, ultimately helping them deliver world-class solutions to meet the diverse, evolving IT needs of their customers.

F5 also arms channel partners with dedicated marketing resources, including programmatic support for lead generation, customer-focussed events, and targeted outreach campaigns.

In short, F5's partner strategy is to collaboratively enhance partners' ability to add value to their customers' environment.

Lastly...

F5 solutions are designed for use by organizations across verticals. Our solutions provide verticals such as BFSI answers to some of their application delivery woes. Today, the BFSI sector is expected to provide services over a variety of business delivery channels. With financial inclusion, they are expected to deliver financial services to the remotest locations in the country. Our web acceleration solutions ensure that applications are delivered to these locations with optimum levels of performance, availability and security.

With services such as 3G, telecom service providers can expect a surge in data traffic. Their solutions are designed to ensure that telecom networks are able to handle the spikes in traffic and re-direct application traffic intelligently to ensure the highest levels of application performance and availability. Therefore, even the telecom vertical is the key area of focus for us as it stands to benefit from adopting F5 solutions.

For More Contact:
Syeda Beenish
beenish@varindia.com