F5 Survey Indicates Growing Hybrid Deployments Across Asia Pacific

Releases F5® BIG-IP 12.0 to improve on-premises and off-premises deployments

SYDNEY, AUGUST 20, 2015 – F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) today released findings from ‘The State of Application Delivery in APAC 2015’ survey, which found that enterprise applications are increasingly being moved into the cloud as organisations embrace the “cloud-first” philosophy. Based on survey data from 3,200 IT decisions makers across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, the findings detail their current and planned use of application services.

Growing number of applications and flexibility of cloud

Findings further reveal that the use of applications by APAC companies is growing and shows no sign of abating. Amongst those surveyed, almost half (45%) currently deploy between 1-200 applications, while almost 10 per cent of organisations currently deploy more than 3,000 applications. The study also showed that at least 41 per cent of IT decision makers are open to moving up to a quarter (24%) of their applications to the cloud by 2016, while almost 24 per cent are keen to move between 25 to 50 per cent.

“As applications continue to be a critical part of the business strategy, organisations are seeking the same confidence level in cloud deployments that they’ve seen in the data centre. Companies in every industry rely on applications to drive customer engagement, employee productivity and revenue today. In fact, our research revealed that mobile applications and big data analytics are considered more important trends than the Internet of Things. These findings suggest a growing hybrid environment across the region, with a mix of on premise and off premises solutions increasingly being adopted by enterprises,” said Emmanuel Bonnassie, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific, F5 Networks.

Obstacles for hybrid cloud adoption

Despite the growing popularity of hybrid clouds, 29 per cent of organisations attributed slow adoption to the failure to identify a comprehensive identity and access management policy. Furthermore, another 35 per cent also admitted to the lack of internal knowledge of the scope of cloud usage as an impediment to adoption.

App security is top priority
Additional survey results reveal that security is top priority for APAC organisations, outranking the importance of availability and performance when it comes to applications. In fact, 42 per cent of survey respondents believe that application services cannot be deployed without security. Yet worryingly, a further quarter had no plans to deploy DDoS protection, suggesting that many organisations in the APAC region still fail to view various types of attack as a significant threat to their business.

BIG-IP® VERSION 12.0 RELEASE

As a direct response to organisations looking to deploy application services in hybrid environments, F5 has announced major updates to its BIG-IP® platform that expands F5’s hybrid services and significantly improves the agility, security and performance of cloud application deployments. The BIG-IP® version 12.0 takes advantage of F5’s application delivery services fabric, extending the F5 Synthesis™ model by combining physical and virtual resources to better support cloud and hybrid scenarios.

F5’s BIG-IP 12.0 release includes many integrated enhancements with notable examples below:

• Unify hardware, software, and managed service resources to realise IT efficiency and cost savings – allows customers to more easily transition workloads to cloud environments as needed and incorporate technologies, such as HTTP/2, while maintaining the same visibility, security and control of traditional infrastructures.
• Supports customers deploying cloud and hybrid IT architectures, with BIG-IP Virtual Edition solutions becoming available in the Azure Marketplace – Initially, all BIG-IP software modules will be available on Azure through F5’s Good, Better, Best licensing model in a “bring your own license” (BYOL) configuration, with 25 M, 200 M, and 1 G options.
• Provides Reliable Access in All Types of IT Environments with SSO – F5 extends secure authentication, authorisation, and accounting (AAA) capabilities to cloud-based, web-based, and virtual applications while centrally managing federated identity functions. F5 provides over 5x the scalability of other vendors for applications and identity access management. In addition, F5 is one of the only leading access vendors to extend single sign-on (via SAML) to client-based applications and other browser-less environments, such as Microsoft Office 365.
• Ensures Superior Protection with the Largest DDoS Vector Spectrum and Increased Attack Visibility – With BIG-IP 12.0, F5 offers the most comprehensive and effective mitigations to protect against sophisticated, high-volume DDoS threats on-premises or in the cloud. F5 also helps companies strengthen their security postures and agility with simplified threat visibility, providing thorough drill-down summaries of attack details.
• Ensures Improved SSL Capabilities for Comprehensive Security – Organisations’ use of SSL is rapidly increasing, with many IT teams moving toward an “encrypt everything” approach. BIG-IP provides innovative, integrated SSL encryption and visibility to manage security certificates and keys across physical, virtual, and cloud deployments—all without the blind spots or performance loss typical of other vendors’ offerings.

F5’s programmable, extensible architecture and growing ecosystem of technology partners make its application services an ideal fit for emerging IT trends such as SDN, NFV and converged systems offerings. BIG-IP version 12.0 software will be available in September 2015, with BIG-IP virtual edition availability in the Azure Marketplace anticipated in October 2015. Please contact a local F5 sales office for additional product and service availability information pertaining to specific countries.

About F5

F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) makes apps go faster, smarter, and safer for the world’s largest businesses, service providers, governments, and consumer brands. F5 delivers cloud and security solutions that enable organizations to embrace the application infrastructure they choose without sacrificing speed and control. For more information, go to f5.com. You can also follow @f5networks on Twitter or visit us on LinkedIn and Facebook for more information about F5, its partners, and technologies.

F5 is a trademark or service mark of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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