It’s time again to dig into the application services organizations are actually using to make apps faster and safer.
Of note this quarter again is a continuing rise in use of bot defense services (up another 1%). Security application services held firm, showing no losses or gains, but acceleration again slowed down (pun intended). The rise and fall of acceleration services appears to be seasonal. Expect to see a rise again next quarter as we head into the heavily digital holiday season.
This quarter, analytics-related services caught my eye. A trip down memory lane and four years of data discovered a steady growth.

This should not be surprising given that 74% of organizations in our State of Application Delivery 2018 survey told us that analytics was important to the operation of their infrastructure. Year over year we see continued growth and use stats and analytics related capabilities, which serve to increase visibility. Survey after survey reinforces this finding with “lack of visibility” cited as an impediment and challenge to everything from cloud migration to comprehensive security.
We’ll continue to track this trend and expect to see it continue to climb steadily upward as machine learning and big (operational) data become indispensable to scaling IT operations.

The application services represented are not all inclusive; it is a sample based on data compiled from iHealth over the course of the previous 3-month quarter.
DEFEND
BOT DEFENSE UP AGAIN
Bot defense gained 1% again over last quarter, growing from 21% to 22% of organizations employing it to defend against malicious non-human traffic.
Research from F5 Labs proposed that half of all Internet traffic originates with bots. Nearly one third (30%) of these are malicious.
CONTROL & PROTECT
SECURITY STANDS FIRM
Use of application access and web single-sign on services were steady quarter over quarter, as was web security usage.
Analysis from F5 labs revealed that applications and identities were the initial targets in 86% of breaches, making these application services critical.
ACCELERATE
REDUCING SPEED
Web acceleration and HTTP compression services each lost previous gains, dropping from 39% to 37% and 44% to 42% respectively.
HTTP/2 made no gains, remaining at just 2% of sites.

About the Author

Related Blog Posts

F5 accelerates and secures AI inference at scale with NVIDIA Cloud Partner reference architecture
F5’s inclusion within the NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) reference architecture enables secure, high-performance AI infrastructure that scales efficiently to support advanced AI workloads.
F5 Silverline Mitigates Record-Breaking DDoS Attacks
Malicious attacks are increasing in scale and complexity, threatening to overwhelm and breach the internal resources of businesses globally. Often, these attacks combine high-volume traffic with stealthy, low-and-slow, application-targeted attack techniques, powered by either automated botnets or human-driven tools.
F5 Silverline: Our Data Centers are your Data Centers
Customers count on F5 Silverline Managed Security Services to secure their digital assets, and in order for us to deliver a highly dependable service at global scale we host our infrastructure in the most reliable and well-connected locations in the world. And when F5 needs reliable and well-connected locations, we turn to Equinix, a leading provider of digital infrastructure.
Volterra and the Power of the Distributed Cloud (Video)
How can organizations fully harness the power of multi-cloud and edge computing? VPs Mark Weiner and James Feger join the DevCentral team for a video discussion on how F5 and Volterra can help.
Phishing Attacks Soar 220% During COVID-19 Peak as Cybercriminal Opportunism Intensifies
David Warburton, author of the F5 Labs 2020 Phishing and Fraud Report, describes how fraudsters are adapting to the pandemic and maps out the trends ahead in this video, with summary comments.
The Internet of (Increasingly Scary) Things
There is a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that gets attached to any emerging technology trend, particularly when it involves vast legions of consumers eager to participate. And while it’s easy enough to shrug off the paranoia that bots...
