If you’re still running web application and API protection (WAAP) services in multiple distributed DMZs across every region or cloud you touch, stop it. Not because it’s broken (yet), but because it’sexpensive, increases complexity, and, frankly, obsolete in a multicloud world.
The old model of deploying perimeter controls like firewalls, WAFs, bot protection, TLS termination, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation (you know, a traditional DMZ) at every regional choke point made sense when workloads were monolithic and traffic stayed in one place. That’s not today’s reality.
Today, apps are distributed. APIs are chatty. Traffic is east-west, not just north-south. And every “new DMZ” you bolt onto your infrastructure is just another layer of cost, redundancy, and operational overhead that your NetOps and SecOps teams have to duct-tape together and pretend is fine.
It’s not fine and let me tell you why.
The case for centralized security
Enter Equinix and F5 Distributed Cloud Services Customer Edge (CE). Together, they offer a smarter way to architect perimeter security services: centralized, globally distributed, and connected at the edge. This isn’t just security, it’s the future of multicloud mastery, where the edge becomes your command center.
Instead of replicating the same stack in every cloud region and location, you build it once at a strategically connected Equinix point of presence (PoP) using Distributed Cloud CE from the Equinix Edge Marketplace.
That’s your new DMZ. One perimeter. Many clouds. Full control.
Equinix Fabric gives you private, low-latency interconnects to all major cloud providers. Distributed Cloud CE gives you WAAP as a cloud-native service that can be deployed at those edge nodes with full multicloud and service mesh support. As a result, you get:
- Global scale without global sprawl: One WAAP deployment can protect apps across AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-prem without running four separate stacks or building cloud-specific workarounds.
- Reduced redundancy: Instead of provisioning and maintaining N copies of the same policy and protection logic, you centralize them and let the network bring the traffic to you. If you’re part of the 53% of organizations that tell us inconsistent security policies remains a significant headache in multicloud models, this should appeal to you.
- Performance gains: Sub-10-millisecond latency to all major cloud regions from Equinix. That’s faster than most intra-cloud-region traffic paths, and it doesn’t eat up your local bandwidth.
- Real cost reduction: You're not spinning up compute in every region for security services. You're not paying per-cloud egress fees to shuttle traffic around willy nilly. You're not burdening already-slim NetOps and SecOps teams with stitching together DIY perimeters.
According to Equinix’s 2024 Global Interconnection Index, enterprises leveraging centralized edge interconnects saw up to a 49% reduction in interconnection complexity and a 30% improvement in performance consistency across regions. That’s not a nice-to-have. That’s a blueprint.
What you standardize on matters
The F5 platform is built to deliver network, security, and application services as globally distributed, API-driven services with the ability to deploy them in the public cloud, at the edge, within colocation facilities, or on-prem. Distributed Cloud CE isn’t a lift-and-shift WAF. It’s a fully managed, cloud-native edge stack that includes:
- WAAP (WAF, bot defense, API protection, DDoS mitigation)
- Service mesh integration
- Multi-layered observability
- Consistent policy and security posture across cloud and edge
By standardizing on a platform that was built for the edge, you don’t just reduce redundancy; you unlock architecture patterns that were previously locked behind “yeah but” excuses.
Now you can enforce security policies before traffic even hits your cloud workload. That means no egress or compute costs for requests that weren’t legitimate in the first place. You can terminate TLS once, inspect traffic once, and route based on zero trust or app behavior all at the edge. And you do it without dragging your internal network through five hops and three DNS zones just to make it work.
Reclaim control with Equinix and Distributed Cloud CE
If your WAAP strategy involves managing five DMZs across three clouds and two data centers, you don’t have a security architecture. You’ve got a maintenance plan.
Centralizing your perimeter using Equinix + Distributed Cloud CE doesn’t just reduce cost and complexity; it reclaims control in a world where distribution and fragmentation are the default. This is how you build multicloud security that actually scales.
Don’t chase traffic, own the edge. It’s time to retire the “many DMZs” model and consolidate where it counts. Your ops team, and your budget, will thank you.
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