Application delivery controllers are back on the strategic agenda

Nirav ShahSVP, Product and Solution Marketing | F5

Application delivery controllers (ADCs) have carried the world's most critical applications for decades. Every transaction, every login, every digital experience that matters passes through them. Now AI is raising the stakes on that responsibility. In new research published in June 2026, Application Delivery Controller Opportunities in the Age of AI, Gartner® predicts that by 2029, over 30% of large enterprises and service providers globally will upgrade their ADC hardware infrastructure to address data and AI sovereignty requirements.¹

That prediction deserves attention, and not because it is about networking. It is about where enterprises will run AI, and what they will trust to deliver and protect it.

Why AI is pulling infrastructure decisions back home

The pattern behind the forecast is already visible. Organizations building serious AI capabilities are discovering that their most valuable data cannot simply flow to wherever compute is cheapest. Sovereignty regulations, data privacy obligations, and the sheer cost of moving data in and out of public clouds are driving many enterprises to build private AI environments in their own data centers. Gartner expects overall spending on hardware ADCs to increase 14% in 2026.²

When AI comes home, everything it depends on comes with it: the data pipelines that feed it, the inference endpoints that expose it, and the security controls that protect it. All of that traffic passes through the application delivery layer. The layer that has always determined whether applications perform now determines whether AI does.

Read the vendor recommendations as your requirements list

The research is written for ADC vendors, and it tell vendors what to build. I would encourage every technology leader to read this report as a checklist of what to demand from any application delivery controller vendor you evaluate. Three questions stand out to us:

• First, can your delivery layer secure AI it cannot fully see? AI applications face threats that traditional controls were never designed for: prompt injection, data poisoning, and agent impersonation among them. According to Gartner, ADCs can enhance security for agentic AI by serving as AI gateways that enforce guardrails at the network perimeter or API level.³ However, the most granular controls remain within the application or IAM layer.
  
  If your delivery infrastructure cannot articulate how it protects an inference endpoint or governs agentic AI traffic, including emerging patterns like the Model Context Protocol, that is a gap. Application delivery and security are converging into single platforms: application delivery and security platforms, like F5 ADSP.
  
• Second, is delivery being measured in AI terms? The research notes that market trends indicate a significant shift in purchasing dynamics for AI infrastructure. Increasingly, the responsibility for AI infrastructure investments is moving away from traditional I&O and IT teams. Instead, dedicated AI teams, often reporting directly to the CEO, now lead these decisions, especially within high-maturity organizations. These organizations are also setting the pace for adoption and innovation across the market. ADC vendors must align their strategies to meet the evolving needs and priorities of these AI-focused teams to remain competitive.
  
• Third, can data reach your AI as fast as your AI needs it? Models are only as good as the data delivered to them. Gartner notes ADC vendors can add value by optimizing AI data delivery and ingestion at the network edge and across data center boundaries. By focusing on advanced traffic management, ADCs can address key challenges in AI data movement. Integrating with AI infrastructure and supporting technologies like DPUs will enable ADC vendors to deliver differentiated value for organizations operating across multicloud and WAN environments.⁴
  
  We believe moving data securely, at scale, across hybrid environments is now a defining AI capability, and the delivery layer is where it happens.

One layer, one platform

There is a thread connecting all three questions. AI traffic and AI threats arrive through the same front door. The data feeding your models and the attacks targeting them travel the same paths. When delivery and security live on separate platforms, every seam between them is a blind spot, a policy gap, or a latency tax.

That principle is why F5 has built its strategy around converging application delivery and security into a single platform, spanning hardware, software, SaaS, cloud-native deployments, and DPUs supporting enterprises wherever their AI workloads run. The market is validating the direction, and we feel the Gartner research validates the urgency.

The full report offers a clear-eyed view of where application delivery is headed in the age of AI, and where it is not. I recommend reading it before you plan your next infrastructure decision. You can download a complimentary copy of the report here.

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^{1, 2, 3, 4}GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. And/or its affiliates.
Gartner, Application Delivery Controller Opportunities in the Age of AI, Christian Canales, Marissa Schmidt

About the Author

Nirav ShahSVP, Product and Solution Marketing | F5

Nirav Shah is the Senior Vice President and Head of Products and Solution Marketing at F5, where he leads the strategic direction for Application Security and AI Security. Before joining F5, he spent eleven years at Fortinet in several leadership positions, most notably heading the AI-Powered SASE, SOC, and Secure Networking solutions. His extensive background also includes significant roles at Cisco Systems, where he spearheaded major initiatives for SD-WAN. With more than two decades of experience in the cybersecurity sector, he has an established record of launching market-defining products and building high-performance teams that align product development with sales and marketing for maximum impact. As a thought leader and USC alumnus, he is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a regular contributor to leading publications on the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, while remaining dedicated to mentoring emerging cybersecurity professionals.

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