The breaking point for legacy infrastructure rarely comes from a single failure. It happens when the compounding friction of managing fragmented platforms and point solutions leads to policy inconsistencies, functional gaps, and increased vulnerability exposure.
Faced with these challenges, organizations are actively rethinking their dependencies on legacy vendors. Leaders in finance, healthcare, and technology are using these catalysts to displace incumbents and consolidate their architectures on F5, and these are some of their stories.
Why a global bank replaced Broadcom and Avi
A multinational bank initiated a comprehensive modernization of its application delivery and security architecture to support long-term operational goals. Built on Avi and Broadcom technologies, the bank's architecture struggled with automation and operational consistency. Platform fragmentation prevented the organization from standardizing services globally.
The bank executed a large-scale replacement, migrating Broadcom and Avi deployments to a unified F5 architecture. This established a standardized foundation and simplified regional infrastructure management.
“Faced with the compounding friction of managing fragmented platforms and point solutions, organizations across finance, healthcare, and technology are consolidating their architectures on F5.”
The F5 Flex Consumption Program enabled a hardware refresh utilizing F5 rSeries appliances. This model provided immediate capacity expansion and flexibility for evolving traffic patterns. The bank also adopted F5 web application firewall (WAF) solutions globally. Standardizing on F5 WAF strengthened application-layer protection and improved policy consistency. F5 Professional Services accelerated the implementation using standard deployment patterns to minimize disruption.
The unified architecture expands capacity and increases automation across critical workflows. It provides an operationally consistent platform for secure software adoption across the global business.
Why a healthcare leader chose F5 over Akamai
A leading multinational healthcare services company executing a cloud-first modernization strategy discovered that its existing SaaS-based security solution was leaving it exposed. While migrating from on-premises physical F5 BIG-IP appliances to BIG-IP Virtual Editions (VEs) on Google Cloud, the company found that Akamai’s App and API Protector—which provided their first layer of defense—was failing to detect and block critical threats.
This was confirmed when BIG-IP Advanced WAF VE logs revealed that F5 was successfully blocking threats—such as Log4J exploits—that had bypassed Akamai's solution entirely. This efficacy gap, combined with frustrations over poor vendor support—where critical requests frequently "went into a support black hole"—prompted the search for an alternative SaaS-based WAAP solution.
By deploying F5 Distributed Cloud Services for web application and API protection (WAAP), DDoS mitigation, and bot defense during an extended proof of concept period, the company was able to immediately block the malicious requests that had evaded Akamai’s detection. The organization now benefits from stronger SaaS-based security, with greater confidence in its ability to protect against evolving threats.
Switching from Akamai to F5 Distributed Cloud Services has significantly enhanced the company's security framework and established a stronger operational partnership, with the organization gaining a trusted advisor and worldwide enterprise-class support. Furthermore, by transitioning to the F5 Flex Consumption Program, the company reduced its annual security spend and simplified procurement, freeing up vital budget for other strategic initiatives.
How an MSP replaced Citrix and Radware with F5
A European managed service provider (MSP) scaling its operations within a new Equinix colocation facility sought to streamline its complex, multi-vendor environment. The provider was using Radware for DDoS protection and Citrix Netscaler for load balancing and virtual desktop access but was hampered by several challenges. The company required a more flexible, SaaS-based approach to DDoS mitigation, wanted to replace its Citrix infrastructure following persistent support issues and price hikes, and aimed to introduce new revenue-generating security services for its customers, with WAF as a top priority.
The MSP chose to consolidate its architecture on F5, executing a strategic displacement of both Radware and Citrix solutions. By deploying F5 Distributed Cloud DDoS protection, the provider met its goal of a flexible, hardware-free mitigation solution. Simultaneously, it replaced its entire Citrix Netscaler footprint with BIG-IP Virtual Editions, gaining advanced rate-limiting capabilities that Netscaler lacked and securing perpetual licenses that align with its preference for CapEx models—a purchasing option Citrix no longer offered.
These migrations allowed the organization to unify its application delivery and security services within a single, trusted platform—the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform. The move not only reduced operational complexity, but also created a foundation for future growth, enabling the MSP to easily launch new application security services for its customers as needed.
Why a U.S. tech leader transitioned to F5 from Citrix
Facing an unexpected renewal price increase from Citrix, a major U.S. technology company modernized its application delivery infrastructure. To support developer demands for a highly adaptable architecture, the company began shifting workloads away from legacy Netscaler appliances.
The company successfully migrated delivery of its modern, microservices-based apps to F5 NGINX, which is lightweight and ideal for serving microservices. However, legacy, hardware-dependent workloads lagged, leaving a fragmented operational environment and a lingering Netscaler footprint.
To bridge this gap, F5 established an agreement that consolidated procurement into predictable annual costs. This gave the company a strategic path to replace the remaining Netscaler footprint with F5 hardware at its own pace and easily explore any additional F5 solutions.
By deploying F5 hardware, the company consolidated its application delivery infrastructure into a unified hybrid architecture. Pairing the software-driven agility of NGINX Plus with the high-throughput capabilities of F5 hardware eliminated the operational overhead of a split environment, securing predictable cost management while establishing a high-performance foundation for future modernization.
Apply these strategies to your architecture
Every company in these stories eventually stopped accepting the constraints of their incumbent vendors. By displacing them, they proved that legacy infrastructure friction does not have to be a permanent state.
To achieve this same level of control in your own architecture, contact F5 to map out your migration. Also, be sure to check out more F5 customer stories to see why companies across industries choose F5.
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