F5 Distributed Cloud Services remains a key pillar in bringing the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) to life. Distributed Cloud Services are more than just a portfolio of SaaS services; they’re the connective tissue that’s increasingly unifying F5’s extensive product portfolios. Our recent 7.0 release is both a major step and strategic milestone in our journey to deliver the connectivity, security, and observability fabric that our customers need.
Why F5 Distributed Cloud Services matter more than ever
Modern organizations face a landscape defined by complexity: multicloud architectures, distributed applications, and relentless security threats. Success demands a platform that can unify connectivity, security, and visibility—across every environment, every app, and every API.
Distributed Cloud Services is the backbone of F5 ADSP, offering the agility, resilience, and intelligence needed to deliver and secure digital experiences at scale.
Here are a few highlights of what we released with this latest update:
- API security extends beyond the console. This release extends API discovery and security for applications that are deployed outside of the console. New discovery and testing options for applications supported by F5 BIG-IP, F5 NGINX, and even third-party gateways extend the reach of the console to a broader landscape of applications.
Customers can also deploy API discovery and security in air-gapped environments and securely identify exposed APIs across their estate of applications deployed on BIG-IP, entirely on-premises. - Greater granular controls for bot defense. Improved controls, simplified onboarding, and integrated threat intelligence help customers stay ahead of evolving attacks while streamlining operations. This update offers tighter integration with our managed F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense services, giving customers greater self-serviceability to quickly change deployed configurations and making first-time onboarding easier, thus increasing agility for threat intelligence teams.

- Application delivery & networking enhancements. With this latest release, customers have an expanded toolkit to help deploy and manage their application delivery and networking services. Customers can now take advantage of improved service discovery capabilities to catalog applications running in Kubernetes clusters and deploy native RBAC controls to specific applications. Customers also get improved load balancer health checks, the ability to extend multicloud networking from Distributed Cloud Services to external networking services like SD-WAN and improved routing policies. Together, these enhancements enable customers to easily build a resilient, performant application delivery fabric, critical for today’s distributed workloads.
- CDN cacheable content tool. A new view for HTTP load balancers shows how much content passing through a load balancer can be cached and delivered with our native CDN service, as well as details on why certain content cannot be cached. The cacheable content tool helps our customers fine-tune their app delivery strategies by understanding where caching with CDN can improve the end user experience while also streamlining their operations.

- Increased visibility for DNS zones. A new dashboard delivers enhanced observability and streamlined management for DNS zones. This dashboard enables administrators to quickly assess real-time health and status to get ahead of issues before they become disruptive.
Administrators can now gain real-time visibility into secondary zone sync status, with dashboard insights and visualizations streamlining DNS record management for faster troubleshooting and improved operational efficiency. - Platform resilience & observability. Our ongoing efforts to improve platform resiliency and availability are paramount. We’ve introduced new diagnostic tooling, enhanced logging, and real-time service status to provide greater transparency and faster mitigation when issues are identified, helping to reduce downtime and maintain customer trust.
F5 is committed to delivering services that enable our customers to fully realize the advantages of SaaS as they modernize their distributed infrastructures spanning on-premises, public cloud, and edge environments. Distributed Cloud Services are designed to support the performance and security requirements for applications deployed in any environment.
The connectivity fabric for F5 ADSP
With every release, F5 is investing in the future of Distributed Cloud Servies as the strategic connectivity fabric for F5 ADSP. This means:
- Unified policy and control: Manage delivery and security policies seamlessly across clouds, data centers, and edge.
- SaaS-driven agility: Rapid innovation and automation, with the flexibility to adapt to changing business needs.
- Deep observability: End-to-end visibility for every transaction, API, and user journey—fueling AI-driven insights and proactive defense.
Looking ahead
This release is a testament to F5’s ongoing investment in Distributed Cloud Services innovation. As organizations accelerate their digital transformation, Distributed Cloud Services will continue to evolve as the essential infrastructure for secure, reliable, and observable application delivery.
To learn more, read our press release and product release documentation for more details.
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