F5 and Equinix unite to simplify secure multicloud application delivery

Apps and APIs are the lifeblood of business operations, and organizations increasingly need to share these digital assets with their partners, suppliers, and customers across the globe. Business partner app exchanges enable you to collaborate with partners by allowing them to securely access specific applications, APIs, and data. Among the benefits of these exchanges are:

• API monetization: Creating revenue through tiered access or usage-based pricing models
• Faster time to market: Leveraging pre-built APIs for rapid product launches
• Accelerated innovation: Enabling collaboration and new business opportunities

However, these exchanges must be secure and reliable across diverse geographies to support partners around the world.

Enabling partner access to your internal applications is difficult for security and IT teams due to complex, manual deployment processes and increased cyber risk. Traditional approaches typically involve multiple point products, including network and application firewalls, VPNs, load balancers, and routers spread across various locations, resulting in:

• Applications that are far from partner users, creating latency issues
• App DMZs in the data center handling all cyberattacks, leading to scaling issues
• Complex management across multiple cloud and on-premises environments

Each partner may require different levels of access to your applications and APIs, making it difficult to implement consistent security controls. Additionally, as the number of partners grows, managing and monitoring authentication becomes increasingly complex, putting your apps, APIs, and data at risk.

Collaborating with partners across different industries and regions is further complicated by varied compliance requirements. This complexity makes it hard to balance performance, security, and access needs, resulting in expensive, hard-to-maintain infrastructure.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services within the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform combine with Equinix's global presence to create an application delivery fabric with centralized operations that can help your organization overcome these challenges. You can deploy F5 Distributed Cloud Customer Edge (CE) software on Equinix Network Edge via pre-integrated virtual network functions available from the Equinix Network Edge portal. This lets you quickly and securely connect with partners in key metropolitan areas across the globe without the cost, risk, or delays of deploying new infrastructure. We’ll dive deeper into individual capabilities in future posts, including how you can tailor the solution based on your unique needs.

Distributed Cloud CE lets you bring the capabilities of SaaS-delivered Distributed Cloud Services to on-premises, public cloud, or edge locations. You can deploy F5 services on Equinix Network Edge and combine them with Equinix Fabric to securely and efficiently interconnect private and public clouds and partner networks without requiring physical hardware, significantly reducing operational complexity.

With instant access to Equinix’s global footprint, you can extend F5’s application and security services closer to where your business partners operate. By deploying services adjacent to major cloud providers, you gain enterprise-grade performance and resilience without the cost or risk of routing traffic over the public Internet. This proximity also helps reduce egress fees and improve response times. The result is private, high-performance application delivery to partners, granting them secure access to apps and APIs while maintaining availability and performance.

Distributed Cloud Services provide simplified hybrid multicloud connectivity, robust application delivery, and unified security with consistent policies and visibility in every environment. They also give you the ability to apply region-specific compliance policies to simplify global operations. You can take advantage of security capabilities including WAF, bot defense, distributed denial-of-service attack protection, and API security to protect your data everywhere. Together, F5 and Equinix power secure exchanges across industries, tailored to distinct vertical needs for resilient collaboration with optimal performance.

To enable compliance with regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), financial institutions can create business partner exchanges with maximum uptime and security while eliminating technical complexity. For example, a global bank could securely connect with fintech partners, payment processors, and other financial institutions through a partner exchange hub that enforces strict governance standards while enabling innovation through API sharing.

Agencies at the federal, state, or local level can increase security and collaboration by creating protected channels for interagency information sharing. By establishing segmented, private connections for sharing sensitive citizen data and mission-critical information between authorized agencies, government entities can improve emergency response coordination and simplify constituent service delivery across multiple agencies.

Healthcare organizations can facilitate secure patient data exchange while maintaining compliance with healthcare and data privacy regulations such as HIPAA. F5 and Equinix enable segmented, private, low-latency connections for sharing sensitive patient data with authorized providers, researchers, and partners while maintaining data sovereignty and patient privacy.

Secure app exchanges enable retailers to manage complex partner ecosystems throughout the supply chain. They can extend access to critical applications and data across the entire value chain—from manufacturers and distributors to logistics providers and payment processors—without compromising security or performance. This collaboration allows retailers to quickly adapt to market demands and create more resilient, responsive supply chains.

Companies operating across multiple jurisdictions can maintain complete control over where data is stored, processed, and accessed to comply with data sovereignty requirements. They can comply with local laws by using distinct jurisdictional boundaries and eliminate complexity with a unified global infrastructure.

The joint solution from F5 and Equinix delivers more than just infrastructure. Business benefits include:

• Reduced time to market: Deploy a business partner exchange in minutes instead of spending months on infrastructure planning.
• Comprehensive connectivity: Reach worldwide markets and cloud environments securely with low latency.
• Enhanced innovation: Create secure channels for sharing APIs and data with partners.
• Improved operational efficiency: Gain centralized visibility and policy control across regions and environments.
• Optimized costs: Minimize or completely eliminate hardware costs with on-demand SaaS-based consumption and reduce cloud egress fees by keeping traffic on private, high-performance interconnection paths.
• Increased agility: Adapt to changing business demands without infrastructure constraints.
• Simplified compliance: Support data locality and governance needs across diverse jurisdictions.

By reducing the complexity of global application delivery and security, F5 and Equinix empower organizations to focus on core business outcomes. We’re ready to help you create new revenue streams, enhance customer experiences, and accelerate digital transformation through partner collaboration.

To learn more, please sign up for our webinar. 

Also, be sure to check out our previous blog post, F5 and Equinix Simplify Secure Deployment of Distributed Apps and read our press release.