Application-Aware Services and Cloud Service Delivery

The BIG-IP System: Maintaining Economy of Carrier-Grade Scale

CSPs are in the unique position of both providing economy of scale for customers through cloud service offerings while also needing to provide the same for their own network and services to remain competitive. The pressure to offer more agile services with just-in-time provisioning is giving way to a drive to offer more flexible cloud-based models that can address constantly evolving customer and service requirements.

Such a transition, like the migration from IPv4 to IPv6, does not happen overnight, and thus CSPs need a solution that supports traditional hosted services while enabling a smooth transition to a more agile and just-in-time cloud services delivery model.

To achieve such a transition, CSPs must develop an elastic model that supports both application and subscriber demands. CSPs must be able to consistently manage application, subscriber, and network characteristics throughout the service lifecycle to reliably meet subscriber demand, maintain a high QoE, and maximize profitability.

The BIG-IP platform can scale and provision resources between users and services across the entire service delivery lifecycle. It offers flexible, multi-tenant support across service delivery features as well as across customers, enabling a consistent operational approach to management for CSPs while providing targeted subscriber services. F5’s unified service delivery platform allows CSPs to design and provision services across a variety of service areas, including WAN optimization, application acceleration, and application and network layer security. Whether delivering traditional hosted or cloud services, CSPs can use the BIG-IP platform to offer unique services while meeting subscriber—and their own—expectations for network and application performance and reliability.

The BIG-IP system provides the flexibility and scalability to support CSPs’ cloud offerings, such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS) while simultaneously supporting existing hosted services. F5 enables superior performance for application and services delivery from the cloud. This provides competitive differentiation and SLA support, and improves enterprise customers' confidence when migrating from internal dedicated or hosted to CSP cloud offerings. These capabilities enable CSPs to smoothly transition to a model more compatible with customers’ ever-evolving demands.

Solution

The BIG-IP platform offers multiple, consolidated product solutions for hosted and cloud delivery services:

• BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) is a global load balancing and carrier-grade DNS and application delivery solution that directs users to the most appropriate service location based on policy, such as geography, level of service, and availability. BIG-IP GTM includes DNSSEC capabilities and scaling, and actively participates in the DNS service delivery architecture as a fully secure and authoritative member. 
• BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a local load balancing and application delivery solution that enables non-disruptive provisioning and management of application and cloud services along with dynamic application delivery between on- and off-premises services. BIG-IP LTM efficiently and cost-effectively ensures high availability, security, and scale of services.
• BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is a flexible, high-performance security solution for users and back-end services alike. BIG-IP APM provides policy-based, context-aware access to application services based on existing user policies while simplifying AAA management. BIG-IP APM can be deployed in a hosted environment—as a physical appliance or running on BIG-IP LTM Virtual Edition (VE)—or on-premises, and can be managed discretely by the MSP customer in either deployment scenario. BIG-IP APM provides total flexibility for managed access security solutions.
• BIG-IP Edge Gateway is a complete user and application access solution for remote access services. BIG-IP Edge Gateway brings together SSL VPN remote access, security, application acceleration, bandwidth management, and availability services.
  

F5 products incorporate all the components required to effectively deliver and manage application and cloud services in one integrated and consolidated platform. The BIG-IP system gives CSPs the flexibility, manageability, and agility necessary to maintain performance and economy of scale across traditional and modern service delivery models. 

These other critical solutions for service providers are addressed in more detail in separate profiles:

• Scaling and Securing the Control Plane
• Carrier-Grade NAT and IPv6 Services
• Security for Communication Service Providers
• Intelligent Traffic Management
  
  

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