Published: Jun 1, 2022
多くの企業は、データとアプリケーションの分散ワークロードをエッジに展開することを計画していますが、そのためには、これらのワークロードをサポートできるエッジ アプリケーション プラットフォームが必要になります。このプラットフォームは、新しいアプリケーション パターンのニーズに対応し、運用エクスペリエンスとデータおよび制御のフローの両方に重点を置いたものであることが求められます。
Published: May 31, 2022
Edge computing is under pressure to simultaneously evolve with each wave of the internet. As we ride the third wave, this next evolution demands the creation of a platform to support new capabilities within the edge ecosystem. A platform that cannot simply be bolted together, but requires a new approach with design considerations at the architectural level.
Published: May 25, 2022
どんなに巧妙な脅威であっても、F5のAdvanced Threat Research Center of Excellenceにはすべてお見通しです。このチームは、今日のサイバーセキュリティ脅威の詳細を解明するために厳格な調査を実施し、インサイトを共有して、脅威を阻止できるよう支援しています。
Published: May 12, 2022
ソフトウェア サプライ チェーンに対して既存のセキュリティでは不十分であり、組織がSREのアプローチを用いて運用をモダナイズするにつれて、状況は悪化の一途をたどっていくことでしょう。デジタル トランスフォーメーションの取り組みをやり遂げたいと考えている組織は、今の不足している状況を真摯に受け止め、最初から、ツールと運用ソフトウェアに安全なソフトウェア サプライ チェーンのアプローチを取り入れる必要があります。
Published: May 3, 2022
複数のクラウドの運用は、複雑さそのものです。APIの使用と、スキルやツールがますます不足していくことで、この複雑さは悪化していきますが、それを解消できなくても管理することは可能です。
Published: Apr 21, 2022
半世紀近く前に確立された、ビジネスで使用されるエンタープライズ アーキテクチャのフレームワークは、今日のデジタル トランスフォーメーションをサポートするには十分ではありません。デジタル ビジネスを成功させるために、企業とIT部門はエンタープライズ アーキテクチャをモダナイズする必要があります。
Published: Apr 19, 2022
パフォーマンスは、企業がセキュリティと引き換えにその向上を求めるほど、絶対的な存在となっています。さらに、パフォーマンスは、マルチクラウド戦略のメリットを実現する上で大きな障害となり、業務をエッジに拡張することを企業に促す原因ともなっています。
Published: Apr 12, 2022
デジタル トランスフォーメーションの勢いを持続させるために、組織はビジネス部門に改めて焦点を当てる必要があることが明らかになってきました。カスタマ エクスペリエンスが依然として優先される一方で、法務、人事、財務などのビジネス部門をデジタル化することが必要なのです。つまり、デジタル トランスフォーメーションがアプリケーションのモダナイズから運用のモダナイズへと移行する中で、主導権はCIOに移りつつあります。
Published: Mar 16, 2022
デジタル社会が攻撃者にほぼ無限のターゲットを提供する中、従来のサイバーセキュリティの手法やツールは遅れをとっています。セキュリティ企業は、脅威をリアルタイムに検知して大規模に緩和するために、AI/MLを採用した新しいハードウェアとテクノロジを十分に活用する必要があります。
Published: Feb 24, 2022
家庭や企業でコネクテッド デバイスへの依存度が高まり、ITとOTの融合が加速する中、運用とデジタル システムの境界は曖昧になり続けています。このような統合の流れにはわくわくしますが、同時に考慮しなければならない課題や懸念も生じます。
Published: Feb 22, 2022
AIは、ビジネス・オペレーション・セキュリティの各分野で採用され、デジタル ビジネスの成功に不可欠なものとして急速に認知されつつあります。しかし、パターン認識やモデリングを目的とした開発にAIを取り入れることの利点については、それほど広く議論されていません。
Published: Feb 8, 2022
デジタルビジネスの運営には、インサイトを得るためのデータ分析が必要不可欠です。データの偏り、つまり意見に基づいたデータの収集は、パフォーマンス、可用性、セキュリティに関する洞察を得る能力に影響を与え、その結果、インサイトを見逃したり、「誤った」インサイトをもたらします。完全なデジタルビジネスを実現するためには、IT部門とビジネス部門が、データと観測可能性に関する戦略を策定する必要があります。
Published: Feb 8, 2022
人間である以上、ほとんどの人が心臓の鼓動が速くなる、筋肉が緊張する、手のひらに汗をかくなど、自律神経系の身体反応が激しくなる、いわゆる「闘争・逃走反応」を経験しているはずです。この反応にはパニック感が伴うことがあり、論理的に考えることがほとんどできなくなる意思決定の麻痺が生じます。
Published: Jan 25, 2022
デジタルビジネス機能は、カスタマエクスペリエンスをサポートする上で重要であり、法務機能に注目が集まるのも必然です。デジタルトランスフォーメーションの途上にある企業はフェーズ1に戻り、近年の急速なデジタル化において手作業で維持されてきた機能への対応に取り組んでいます。
Published: Jan 11, 2022
Digital-as-Defaultの世界でも、オペレーションは依然として手作業に頼り過ぎており、適応型アプリケーションを実現するには、オペレーションを進化させる必要があります。この進化には、IT全体にまたがる大幅な変化が必要です。可用性を維持し、パフォーマンスを最適化して、セキュリティを確保するAI対応の適応性が必要です。
Published: Nov 22, 2021
デジタル経済の発展に伴い、金融機関を通じた決済処理が増加していますが、悪意のある攻撃者はこのことを大もうけのチャンスと考えています。デジタル決済のエコシステムは、デジタル金融取引を効率化するAPIの使用に依存しており、APIのセキュリティ インシデントの数は年々増加しています。デジタル企業、特に金融機関は、顧客とビジネスを守るために、APIのセキュリティ確保に一層注力する必要があります。
Published: Nov 9, 2021
カスタマ エクスペリエンス(CX)がアップタイムにのみ関連していると考えるのは誤りです。CXは、電源が入っているかどうかだけでなく、全体的な操作から生じる感覚の影響を受けます。また、CXは顧客とじかに接するアプリケーションに限定されるものではありません。主に人間以外の存在(機械やスクリプトなど)がアクセスするアプリケーションでも、プロセスのどこかに人間が介在しています。その結果、CXはデジタル トランスフォーメーションにおいてますます重要な要素となり、開発ライフサイクルにも関連してきます。
Published: Oct 4, 2021
モニタリング2.0とも呼ばれる可観測性は、オペレータやデジタル ビジネスにとって、ユーザー エクスペリエンスとビジネス成果の関係を理解して安定させる際にこの技術の導入を大きく前進させるものです。しかしまだ戦いの半分に過ぎず、残りの半分には分析と自動化が関わってきます。
Published: Sep 20, 2021
計算能力は無限ではありません。エッジに移行するときにサイズやスペースを大きくすることに限界がある場合は、代わりに最適化に注目しなければなりません。これまでも容量を改善する必要があるときは、最適化されたハードウェア コンポーネントを導入してきました。ハードウェアによって最適化されたコンピューティングは、エッジでの組織の有効化をサポートしようとしているアプリケーション中心のプラットフォームに必要な能力となります。
Published: Sep 7, 2021
企業が「デジタル アズ デフォルト」運用モデルへの移行を続けると、運用は容易になりますが、複雑さが増すことになります。タスクの自動化にはより多くのコードが必要であり、デジタル拡張にはより多くの接続が必要であり、AIを活用したビジネスにはより多くのデータが必要です。そして、複雑さはセキュリティの敵でもあります。そのため、企業はセキュリティ スタックを適応させて維持する必要があります。
Published: Aug 16, 2021
自動化とデジタル化が爆発的に成長し、ハイブリッド ワーク モデルの傾向が強まることで、IPベースのセキュリティからIDベースのアクセス戦略への流れが加速するでしょう。
Published: Jun 28, 2021
ほとんどの企業は、Infrastructure as Codeによる自動化を採用していますが、導入のコントロールは維持しています。今後は、イベントに基づいてトリガー自体を自動化するイベント駆動型のアプローチが主流になると思われます。これは、将来のアプリケーションの適応性を高める重要な要素であり、これによってイベントに自動的に対応し、サービスレベルの目標を達成するためにロケーション、セキュリティ、キャパシティを調整することができます。
Published: Jun 14, 2021
It should be no surprise that just as the emergence of cloud gave us cloud-native applications, edge is driving a set of edge-native applications. These applications, however, will not reside solely at the edge. Simultaneously, new architectural patterns are emerging that take advantage of applications residing in the cloud and data center.
Published: Jun 2, 2021
Let’s say your cat has wandered off. You can’t find them anywhere and tasty treats are not working their magic today. Then imagine that you could leverage the video doorbells in your neighborhood—i.e., idle compute and processing power from endpoints and nodes at the edge—to find them.
Published: May 17, 2021
Cloud computing has long sought to remove the need to deal with infrastructure, with APIs and drag-and-drop configuration tools to help keep those adverse to the network and infrastructure from getting their hands dirty. But we can't just ignore it either, or its profile as a key attack target.
Published: May 3, 2021
User, within the context of the application domain, has always referred to the entity that interacts with an application. Just as shifts in application architectures drive changes in the technologies that deliver and secure them, shifts in the definition of user have driven changes in where apps are deployed.
Published: Apr 28, 2021
You might have noticed a few changes at F5 over the past year. First, we’re just F5 now. Not F5 Networks. Just F5. Because honestly, we’ve never been centered on the network.
Published: Apr 5, 2021
Like Greek and Roman gods, multiple manifestations of the same persona are evident throughout many mythologies. At the core, each incarnation is a new face to an existing persona. A similar reality is true in the digital world; what we call “applications” can often be considered as incarnations of existing functionality.
Published: Mar 17, 2021
This framework maps the technology evolution that accompanies the business journey from physical to digital models. Each phase is marked by a business initiative that is enabled by technology.
Published: Mar 10, 2021
While there’s a tendency to focus on applications that directly implement a customer experience, every business domain will see the rise of applications that ultimately become critical to their digital presence. These applications, then, become the modern equivalent of a monolith.
Published: Mar 3, 2021
Like many proverbs, the origins of "necessity is the mother of invention" is muddled. Often attributed to Plato, it is also ascribed to a variety of other well-known writers. Lacking an authoritative source, however, makes the proverb no less true.
Published: Feb 11, 2021
There are many tropes in film and television. We're aware of them, even if we don't implicitly recognize them. A common set of tropes revolves around the hero of a story.
Published: Dec 28, 2020
In 2018, Epic Games landed a $15B USD valuation. Many attributed this incredible event to its viral video game, Fortnite. With over 200 million users across the world, the game pulls in billions of dollars a year through microtransactions.
Published: Dec 7, 2020
This is the reality of cloud properties. They all use the same mechanisms – APIs, consoles, processes – to perform common operational tasks. This is one of the benefits of cloud. And in terms of onboarding new technology professionals, it can dramatically reduce time required for onboarding.
Published: Oct 29, 2020
The advantages just aren’t about defense; careful control over entry points also results in a multiplicative increase in the efficacy of defenders. It’s no surprise, then, that these principles are often applied in the world of digital security.
Published: Aug 27, 2020
The issue of remote access has become a priority as our response to the pandemic continues to encourage, if not require, working from "anywhere but the office." The first wave of remote access concerns was focused on users. How do they access ...
Published: Jul 30, 2020
Over the years we've seen a lot of industry trends come and go. Two—cloud and mobility—fall into what we might call "mega trends." These are movements within the industry that have...
Published: Jul 27, 2020
Most organizations are operating in multiple cloud properties in addition to their own on-premises private cloud. For the past three years we've asked about the challenges and frustrations professionals in every role within IT experience while operating in this mode.
Published: Jun 25, 2020
Based on our research, you are almost certainly in the 87% of organizations that operate applications across multiple cloud providers. Of that majority, you're also most likely to employ between two and six different public cloud providers. More than half (51%) of organizations do.
Published: Jun 22, 2020
The term 'cloud-scale' is often tossed around blithely. It's used in marketing a lot to imply REALLY BIG scale as opposed to, I suppose, traditional not-as-big-but-still-significant scale.
Published: Jun 15, 2020
AI use cases are found in every aspect of business, from IT to security to finance to marketing. The ability to analyze large data sets and discover patterns and relationships in them uncovers insights that can lead to...
Published: May 26, 2020
Perhaps the biggest impact on operations due to the abrupt migration of consumer and employee to digital experiences is availability. Certainly, a significant percentage of organizations struggled with remote access as workers moved from the office to the home. But only some workers wound up working from home while entire populations were suddenly reliant on digital equivalents of day to day life.
Published: May 11, 2020
Recently, I was reminded of the importance of calibrating measurements when I re-entered the realm of reef keeping. Like rapid changes in the application landscape, reef keeping has dramatically changed in the past five years.
Published: Apr 27, 2020
In days gone by, the app services (the data path) delivering apps was straight and narrow. All apps basically traversed the same set of services over the same network.
Published: Apr 20, 2020
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Many people have uttered this phrase since COVID-19 forced us from our offices into our homes to work remotely. One of those extraordinary measures has been ...
Published: Apr 6, 2020
This componentization of IT is like the componentization of the applications it is tasked with securing and delivering. Estimates range from 80 to 90% of modern applications are composed of third-party components; most of which are open source.
Published: Mar 31, 2020
リモート アクセス サービスが逼迫している理由の1つとして、今日のネットワーク トラフィックの大半をビデオとSaaSの通信が占めていることが挙げられます。同時に、このパンデミック下で遠隔医療が進み、それに伴ってライブ ビデオ トラフィックが増加しています。リモート ユーザーに配慮してキャパシティとパフォーマンスを向上させる方法の1つは、現在のアプリケーション トラフィックの構成を反映できるように、リモート アクセスの設定を更新することです。
Published: Mar 26, 2020
今から10年以上前、クラウドの主な利点として俊敏性が約束されていました。アンケートや調査では、あらゆる種類のクラウド導入の牽引役として、捉えどころがなく、あいまいに定義された「俊敏性」が頻繁に挙げられていました。
Published: Mar 23, 2020
The inescapable truth of this survey is that the life of a network operations professional is increasingly automated. From configuration changes to ...
Published: Mar 17, 2020
Before you dive in, we wanted to reiterate that DevOps is unique. If you think they're just developers who write scripts and manage CI/CD pipelines, you'd be wrong. If you thought they were just operations ...
Published: Mar 2, 2020
When we dig into the state of application services each year, we don't just focus on app services. While that's certainly our primary interest, there are a plethora of trends and technologies that impact app services in general.
Published: Feb 24, 2020
Are we just using telemetry because it sounds sexier than data? Ultimately both data and telemetry are organized bits of information. To use them interchangeably is not a crime. But the reality is that, if you want to be accurate, there is a difference. And that difference will become increasingly important as organizations march into the data economy.
Published: Feb 18, 2020
A growing number of app services are an integral component of a cloud-native architecture. This is, in part, why we see a shift in responsibility for app services away from IT operations toward DevOps.
Published: Feb 11, 2020
アプリケーション サービスの状況調査に対して2600件を超える回答を数か月かけて分析した結果、デジタル トランスフォーメーションが世界中の組織に与えている影響について興味深い考察を得ることができました。企業は技術変革への取り組みを継続しているのです。5人中4人のエグゼクティブが、デジタル トランスフォーメーションに取り組んでおり、こうした取り組みの結果、自動化とセキュリティを最優先とするクラウドネイティブ アーキテクチャとアプリケーション サービスの採用が進んでいると回答しています。
Published: Feb 7, 2020
As organizations march steadily on their journey through digital transformation, the issue of integration becomes critical. In addition to the obvious ...
Published: Feb 3, 2020
The inability to verify the integrity or correctness of data should be of significant concern to those organizations pursuing digital transformation efforts (which rely heavily on data). That data will be used not only to conduct business but it also forms the basis for pattern and behavior recognition. Accordingly, it will power advanced analytics that automatically make operational and business decisions without human intervention.
Published: Jan 21, 2020
API stands for Application Programming Interface. Over the years, it has evolved from a tightly coupled imperative specification to a loosely coupled declarative model. Regardless of implementation and the mode of invocation, APIs tend to be associated with app development. But another API economy has been steadily expanding. It lies within operations. And in that domain, the "A" in API stands for automation.
Published: Dec 23, 2019
Application architectures have evolved several times since the early days of computing, and it is no longer optimal to rely solely on a single, known data path to insert application services. Furthermore, because many of the emerging data paths are not as suitable for a proxy-based platform, we must look to the other potential points of insertion possible to scale and secure modern applications.
Published: Dec 17, 2019
Consider this: 54% of containers live fewer than five minutes. Predictably, this leads to security topics. If you’re trying to secure access (and you should be) and trying to protect the app or API running in that container, you've got to make sure your security services are constantly adjusting policies to match the current state of the cluster. That's a lot of change going on, which means a lot of operational overhead.
Published: Dec 9, 2019
Digital transformation is about moving technology from business interactions to processes to new models. At first, it's about apps. But as app portfolios expand, it turns to focus on automation and orchestration. With the increase in data generation, transformation becomes the pivot point for new business opportunities.
Published: Nov 25, 2019
A Dimensional Research survey of more than 3000 mobile app users confirmed what many of us believe about customer expectations today.
Published: Nov 18, 2019
Did you know that when Sysdig looked at its customers this year it found more than two million container instances running on-premises and in the public cloud? More exciting (for us, at least) was the data point that NGINX was running in 60% of those containers. That’s a lot of NGINX.
Published: Nov 11, 2019
Cloud-native applications are being built at a good clip. While they're not quite dominating app portfolios just yet, they are increasing in number.
Published: Nov 4, 2019
APIs create value through their ability to abstract at the application layer. For example, the use of an API to abstract access to internal systems and data provides a way to simplify and automate access to legacy IT systems.
Published: Oct 28, 2019
It doesn’t matter how fast you can deliver if deployment delays release. While NetOps are warming up to automation and orchestration, there are significant challenges facing their efforts to speed up deployment.
Published: Oct 21, 2019
Visibility is an often-cited challenge typically referring to the ability to inspect traffic, transactions, and errors that occur during an application's execution.
Published: Oct 14, 2019
We are thrilled that Intel has named F5 as a 2019 Leaders Board partner in the Intel® Network Builders program. Our strategic partnership with Intel has, for more than 15 years, enabled F5 to use Intel technology to deliver optimized, highly performant application services for both enterprises and service providers.
Published: Oct 14, 2019
Digging through Sumo Logic's latest data - compiled from actual usage of more than 2000 customers - we see an increase in Kubernetes usage specifically in AWS.
Published: Oct 7, 2019
Breaches abound. Vulnerabilities are discovered on a daily basis, and the patch gap doesn't seem to be getting any smaller.
Published: Sep 30, 2019
The open source movement has always focused on freedom. The freedom to choose the solution that works best for you given skills, budgets, architecture, and goals.
Published: Sep 26, 2019
Our understanding of the role of application services in an increasingly application-centric business world has grown considerably thanks to the thousands of respondents who take time to respond every year.
Published: Sep 23, 2019
The average person now has more than 80 apps installed on their phone. That same person interacts with an average of nine of those apps every day, and thirty over the course of a month.
Published: Sep 16, 2019
Who reading this is running OpenStack in their production environment? Prometheus? Perhaps you're generating Grafana dashboards? GitHub. GitLab. Nagios. Jenkins. Ansible. Puppet Enterprise?
Published: Sep 11, 2019
Along with the larger container ecosystem, service meshes continue to plow forward toward maturity. We're still in early days, though, and there are a variety of approaches being applied to solving the problem of intra-container traffic management with service meshes.
Published: Sep 9, 2019
Predictions that the data center is dead - or at least on its death bed have been made many times since the ascendancy of cloud to the majority industry mindshare. And it continues to be wrong.
Published: Sep 3, 2019
Businesses want speed. One of the impacts of digital transformation - and the associated pressure to succeed in an app economy - is the desire to move at speed.
Published: Aug 26, 2019
The first thing to note is that cloud-native, despite its name, does not require cloud.
Published: Aug 21, 2019
This September, in Seattle, NGINX will be hosting its annual conference. I'm already booked to go and you should (very seriously) consider attending, too.
Published: Aug 5, 2019
One of the interesting – and more frustrating - things I've noted over the years is the differences between how network engineers and application developers see apps. We've seen this in the way applications are depicted on network diagrams and, conversely, the way networks are shown on application architecture diagrams.
Published: Jul 29, 2019
In the days of yore, transmissions in cars were manual. Some might have referred to them as a "stick" thanks to the mechanism by which you shifted gears. In those days, an automatic transmission was something special that you often had to order.
Published: Jul 22, 2019
In traditional network infrastructure there are generally three architectural planes associated with network infrastructure: data, control, and management.
Published: Jul 15, 2019
When it comes to breaches involving apps and data exposure, fingers are almost always pointed at developers. Many times, this is the right direction. Injection attacks and stack-based exploits are almost always the result of insecure code.
Published: Jul 8, 2019
Lori MacVittie continues our blog series surrounding F5’s acquisition of NGINX, discussing the concept of operational simplicity.
Published: Jun 24, 2019
Let's stop spending so many cycles on what to call each other that we miss the opportunity to create a collaborative environment in which to deliver and deploy apps faster, more frequently, and most of all, securely.
Published: Jun 17, 2019
When it comes to multi-cloud consistency, Lori MacVittie discusses why a failure to recognize the two different types of consistency - functional and operational - and their importance is at the root of the problem with implementation.
Published: Jun 10, 2019
The path to production is not a product. It's a process. And it's a process that needs to be collaborative and delivered in parallel whenever possible to improve time to value and enable successful application deployments.
Published: Jun 3, 2019
It is the use of cloud-provider security services that can dramatically impact the operational costs of doing business in the cloud - especially when it comes to managing application services infrastructure. Lori MacVittie discusses how augmentation and strong password practices will help constrain the cost of doing business in the cloud.
Published: May 28, 2019
Because such transitions take time - we're still almost all operating in a multi-cloud model today, after all - it's important to find and take advantage of architectural options that maximize benefits without compromising on core customer needs like availability and security. Using a two-tier architectural approach provides both without constraining containerization efforts.
Published: May 20, 2019
With a staggering 60% of users experiencing a container security incident in the past 12 months, if you aren’t already practicing safe containerization, Lori MacVittie shares five steps to consider putting into practice.
Published: May 16, 2019
We look at the trends and changes in application services usage – across security, performance, and identity/access – from the first quarter of 2019.
Published: May 13, 2019
The majority of organizations across the globe and in every industry are currently in process of digital transformation. Lori MacVittie looks at the latest trends surrounding the digital economy and supply chains to better understand how enterprises are changing how they develop apps, when they deploy apps, and with what architectures.
Published: May 6, 2019
Operations needs integration. Without it, we can't automate processes (which is what orchestration is) because processes necessarily span multiple systems, services, and devices—each of which likely has its own operational domain and toolset.
Published: Apr 29, 2019
We are nearly numb to breaches today because they happen with such alarming frequency. At the same time, we are so enthralled by our own brilliance in cryptography that we forget that most data at rest—tucked away inside databases—is unencrypted.
Published: Apr 25, 2019
Bringing together F5 and NGINX, we will be able to satisfy the requirements for “reliability” no matter the definition. Whether that applies to the reliability of small, developer-driven deployments scaling modern applications or large deployments scaling application services and traditional apps alike, a combined portfolio will offer customers the ability to use the right tool for the right app.
Published: Apr 22, 2019
There is a growing demand for APIs. Whether helping to fuel the digital economy by enabling mobile apps or internally pumping up productivity through automation and orchestration initiatives, APIs are everywhere.
Published: Apr 19, 2019
As the world of container technology matures, so does the integration of the enterprise-class technology required to support it, encouraging traditional offerings to move in the direction of container orchestration environments like Kubernetes.
Published: Apr 17, 2019
Today, both traditional and modern architectures are valid and necessary for business to succeed in delivering digital capabilities faster and more frequently and, most importantly, in the most efficient way possible to support its most valuable asset: a multi-generational portfolio of applications.
Published: Apr 15, 2019
Digital transformation is driving growth of application portfolios and changing the way in which they are developed, delivered, integrated, and ultimately even consumed.
Published: Apr 11, 2019
The challenge of consistent security across applications remains. One of the culprits appears to be that application services aren't always moving with the applications they protect.
Published: Apr 8, 2019
Componentization is great for development and certainly aids in speeding up time to value. But it can have a negative impact on performance - and security.
Published: Apr 3, 2019
Looking forward, F5 and NGINX can enable enterprises to address one of IT’s most pressing needs: fast, frequent deployments across a varied set of application architectures residing in multiple cloud properties. We believe that doing that successfully depends on NGINX remaining open source and being driven in large part by the community that built it.
Published: Apr 2, 2019
DNS remains one of the least appreciated application services in existence. Its role is so important, that its failure is considered catastrophic.
Published: Mar 25, 2019
We have to move from relying on Moore's Law to increase our capacity and speed to relying on a system of systems that scales itself to process more data, more frequently, and faster than ever before.
Published: Mar 18, 2019
Given the slow but steady adoption of HTTP/2 and the security challenges posed by HTTP/3, the latter is likely to face a long, uphill road to adoption for the foreseeable future.
Published: Mar 14, 2019
Fail fast is the mantra of speed today. Whether DevOps or business, the premise of operating in a digital economy demands uptime as close to perfect as you can get it.
Published: Mar 11, 2019
Team structure matters. Not just because of the need to encourage a more collaborative culture, but because of the way it impacts decisions - including technology choices.
Published: Mar 4, 2019
Microservices and Function as a Service (FaaS) often facilitate Agile development because a relatively small team can design, develop, and then refine a service much more quickly than they can a large, monolithic application. But there's another interesting benefit of microservices and FaaS that isn't being touted as much as it should: security.
Published: Feb 25, 2019
For five years we've asked thousands of respondents across every role in IT and around the world a simple question: What one thing would you never deploy an application without? In other words, what's the most important thing you can provide for your applications?
Published: Feb 22, 2019
By layering an F5 Advanced WAF in front of a 3scale API gateway, you can benefit from additional security measures that include the use of IP intelligence to identify threats faster and more accurately, the ability to offer a secure API façade internally or externally, and protection against a variety of application layer attacks.
Published: Feb 19, 2019
While most of the focus of programmability is on operations today, there remains a significant amount of data path programmability that's vital to enabling consumers to interact with applications.
Published: Feb 11, 2019
Function as a Service (FaaS) is quickly finding use in a variety of operational and development contexts. And while the rising star of cloud computing is often mentioned in conjunction with APIs and IoT and mobile apps, there is significant use outside development for the technology.
Published: Feb 4, 2019
We know that just about half of the traffic on the Internet today is generated by bots. Some good, mostly bad. Operational efficiencies from automation and machine learning—usually discussed in a more positive context—are also being weaponized to perform reconnaissance probes and attacks alike.
Published: Feb 1, 2019
The strategic importance of data can only be realized through an application. And an application can only fulfil its purpose by interacting with data. This strategic codependency can be clearly seen in this year’s State of Application Services report.
Published: Jan 28, 2019
Container adoption has been a steady course to consume budget for a couple years now. What may be a surprise is the reasons behind that adoption. Spoiler alert: it isn't really about microservices.
Published: Jan 25, 2019
As DevOps has continued to press its case inside of IT, we've seen the adoption of automation and "as code" methodologies, including growing use of CI/CD tools like GitHub enterprise and Jenkins within the production pipeline. This post from Lori MacVittie and the Office of the CTO takes a closer look at Infrastructure as Code and what F5 is doing to enable and support it.
Published: Jan 22, 2019
APIs are the new CLI. Increasingly, it is through an API that infrastructure and application services are provisioned, configured, and operated. Between automation and integration into deployment pipelines, the API is a critical component that every device—hardware, software, on-premises, or cloud—must have.
Published: Jan 15, 2019
Diving into application services alone is (almost) always interesting. But delving into the applications, environments, trends, and technology that drive organizations to use an average of 16 different applications services gives us a valuable glimpse of what IT and business will look like in the next year.
Published: Jan 8, 2019
Lori MacVittie comments on the role of cloud and application services in the context of F5’s upcoming State of Application Services report. In all its forms—public, on-premises private, and SaaS—cloud has maintained its place of strategic importance, impacting the application services deployed, the tools and technologies used to automate and orchestrate IT, and even in the evolution of team structures inside organizations. Will this year continue the trend?
Published: Jan 7, 2019
Lori MacVittie: For as long as I can remember—which is a long time—the siren call of a single pane of glass through which to view and operate infrastructure has lured IT. Like the Holy Grail, it has never been discovered and a good many IT professionals have become cynics as to its existence.
Published: Jan 3, 2019
Serverless is the rising darling of the cloud world, but it's often misunderstood and attributed with almost supernatural powers to reduce costs, speed time to value, and make you breakfast in bed. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s also frequently conflated with Function as a Service (FaaS).
Published: Dec 28, 2018
As the worlds of DevOps and NetOps collide and container environments subsume definitions traditionally used in the network, let’s explore the use of the often-confusing term "ingress" in terms of the data path and container environments.
Published: Dec 17, 2018
Cloud showed us a better way to onboard, provision, and operate network and application infrastructure—aspects that have been steadily pushing their way into the data centers of organizations worldwide. But the digital transformation that began with cloud is now seeping into on-premises systems to bring about something far more interesting: the breakup of the network.
Published: Dec 13, 2018
It’s important to recognize that it’s not always NetOps teams that get in the way of deploying the latest thing/app/service. Impediments to speed are often due to a failure to adopt all the premises of DevOps as organizations seek to transform IT operations.
Published: Dec 10, 2018
Lori MacVittie: There remains a tendency to equate containers with microservices. And by equate, I mean “use interchangeably.” This is a bad assumption.
Published: Dec 3, 2018
Mainframes have a bad rap in IT. They are viewed as dinosaurs, when the reality is that they provide a significant source of computing power for many organizations—computing power that’s growing in use. They also have more to do with DevOps, Agile, and other modern methodologies than you might think.
Published: Nov 29, 2018
Lori MacVittie highlights F5 Labs research on global attacks against IoT devices from January–June 2018, pointing out the sobering implications. Not only do IoT devices continue to be exploited, but they are being transformed into attack platforms, meaning attackers can better take advantage of what’s emerged as a guaranteed growth market.
Published: Nov 26, 2018
A particularly compelling advantage of applying machine learning to application security is that it focuses on constantly learning what is normal and identifying what is not. Lori MacVittie explains how layer 7 Behavioral Denial-of-Service (DoS) protection is like a flu vaccine that's capable of detecting the virus responsible based on its behavior rather than its actual composition.
Published: Nov 19, 2018
Cryptography is naturally a computationally expensive process, meaning it takes more CPU cycles to encrypt or decrypt a message than to execute business logic. For cloud deployments, these added CPU cycles have been an accepted cost because the point is to shift capital costs to operational expense. But decrypting and encrypting a message multiple times—at a non-zero cost each time—can really add up.
Published: Nov 12, 2018
In technology, simplification means abstraction, with declarative interfaces serving as a good example of that abstraction. By simplifying the interfaces used to provision, configure, manage, and integrate infrastructure today, declarative interfaces democratize infrastructure and open up opportunities for both NetOps and DevOps.
Published: Nov 8, 2018
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, as well as growth around analytics-related services.
Published: Nov 5, 2018
Generally speaking, “ignore vulnerabilities” is not something you expect to hear from a security company. And you certainly don't see “ignore vulnerabilities” paired with the notion of “improving security.” But now you have. F5’s Lori MacVittie is kind enough to elaborate.
Published: Oct 29, 2018
When approaching your production pipeline “as code,” it’s a certain bet that multiple sets of operators and developers will be responsible for it. This lies at the heart of the push for standardization—especially as NetOps takes the plunge into developing and maintaining systems to automate and orchestrate elements of the network and application service infrastructure.
Published: Oct 26, 2018
Just as it’s true that the application platform—the web or app server or app engine—must be provisioned first, so too must the network and application service platforms be provisioned before they can be configured. Increasingly, and especially in cloud environments, that provisioning and configuration process is driven by systems like HashiCorp's Terraform.
Published: Oct 22, 2018
Speculation continues around why businesses and industries formerly reluctant to officially encourage open source software use have suddenly embraced it. Most often, the legacy culprit is assumed to be a fear of legal liability. But another catalyst is the driving force of digital transformation.
Published: Oct 15, 2018
Serverless means developers don’t need to worry about infrastructure. And the business, too, sees value in its speed and efficiency. Combined with the frictionless nature of deploying code with serverless, you can be out the door with functionality in hours rather than weeks or months.
Published: Oct 8, 2018
Infrastructure, Configuration, Pipeline, Operations. Suddenly everything is “as code.” Lori MacVittie attempts to sort through the terminology and identify the different components within a continuous IT stack.
Published: Oct 1, 2018
Lori MacVittie explores how the industry has found itself with a strange hybrid of Service-Oriented and Microservice architectures that leaves many wondering where one ends and the other begins.
Published: Sep 28, 2018
When we recently polled IT ops practitioners on the ‘State of Network Automation,’ we found the market experiencing a number of challenges. Among those cited specifically by NetOps professionals was a lack of integrated tools with which to move forward with automation efforts.
Published: Sep 24, 2018
The goal of automation in almost any industry focuses on optimization and eliminating bottlenecks. In the world of IT, that typically means addressing the in-between steps of an operational process.
Published: Sep 20, 2018
From day one of development through post-deployment, the choices we make regarding the security of the entire application stack play out with far-reaching consequences.
Published: Sep 17, 2018
The evolution of F5’s annual survey now emphasizes the application services you need rather than the platforms you use to deliver them. Learn more and participate in the survey today!
Published: Sep 17, 2018
APIs are not integration. They are a means to implement integration. And judging by the challenges seen in the industry, they aren’t enough for IT to get continuous.
Published: Sep 13, 2018
It’s time again to dig into the application services organizations are actually using to make apps faster and safer.
Published: Sep 4, 2018
Just as previous app architectures have driven responses in the network infrastructure, so are containers and microservices. Only this time the changes aren’t coming in the form of a new box. What’s happening now is the move to integrate the application services developers need into the container environment.
Published: Aug 27, 2018
For decades, application services have been deployed on shared platforms. But emerging application architectures such as microservices are forcing changes in the production pipeline that better map to modern deployment schedules and operational practices like infrastructure as code.
Published: Aug 24, 2018
From F5’s Office of the CTO, Lori MacVittie draws connection points between DevOps practices and F5’s new declarative interface that decreases reliance on APIs and increases the ability to implement a fully automated, continuous deployment pipeline.
Published: Aug 20, 2018
Lori MacVittie explores the potential of achieving an ‘MVD’ for an application by adopting a per-app architecture for its tightly coupled app services.
Published: Aug 16, 2018
The association of a singular identity with an IP address is so tightly ingrained in our heads that we tend to apply it to other areas of technology. Even when it’s utterly ineffective.
Published: Aug 15, 2018
The data shows that despite the challenges inherent in automation, NetOps aren't nearly as far behind as some posit.
Published: Aug 13, 2018
Sometimes I love reading commentary from El Reg on IT and technology. Delivered with just the right amount of bite, their bark is often right on target. Other times, though, they miss the mark.
Published: Aug 6, 2018
So says the data. It would be easy to dismiss the importance of network automation by claiming that the size of your organization
Published: Aug 2, 2018
Or is that ‘tears’ of frustration? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Perhaps it’s both.
There is a relationship between network and application architectures. Usually we like to talk about how changes and shifts in application architectures impact the...
Published: Aug 1, 2018
In a more balanced world, application users would have the same level of concern for the security of their data as they do for their access to it.
Published: Jul 30, 2018
Oh yes. It’s happening. Consider making it a part of your overarching cloud strategy to make the process less painful. What do the following have in common? Salmon, Canadian Geese, Monarch butterflies, and applications. If you guessed all of...
Published: Jul 26, 2018
Back in 2015, I noted that Software was Eating IT. That was based on data culled from a variety of industry sources included RightScale, HBR, PWC, and others. From development to deployment to delivery, software was taking over everywhere. But...
Published: Jul 23, 2018
Sure, a data breach may cost more (at least right now) and it certainly forces your failure into the limelight (you gotta notify) but security can’t be just about data exposure. These days you only hear about a breach if there’s been a data...
Published: Jul 19, 2018
As a developer, my favorite editor for writing code is vim. I know, I know. But it’s fast, I can get around in it, and it isn’t emacs. (Yeah, I went there.)
Published: Jul 16, 2018
There’s an old business axiom we all know that goes like this: The customer is always right. In this digital economy, it turns out that axiom has to change to read: The customer’s data is always right. Let me illustrate with a little...
Published: Jul 12, 2018
There are days when the jargon coming out of container land makes your head swim. With each new capability or feature offered by related solutions – service mesh, orchestrators, registries – seems to mandate a new term or phrase.
Published: Mar 15, 2018
The Hunt for IoT by our own F5 Labs threat researchers continues. Its latest report exposes not only an active search for vulnerable IoT devices, but the targeting of build infrastructure.
Published: Mar 12, 2018
When I was a wee lass getting ready to deliver my company’s very first Internet-enabled application, I learned a valuable lesson. It wasn’t about technology. It wasn’t about the Internet. It was about processes and how frustrating they can be t...
Published: Mar 1, 2018
It’s time again to dig into the application services organizations are actually using to make apps faster and safer. Of note is a rise in use of bot defense services and the slow but steady inroads being made by HTTP/2. While not an application..
Published: Feb 26, 2018
Apps are under siege. Attacks occur with alarming frequency – every 39 seconds according to research conducted by the University of Maryland
Published: Jan 16, 2018
Discover the key findings of F5's fourth annual State of Application Delivery report.
Published: Jan 11, 2018
Lori MacVittie continues her series on “The Art of Scaling Containers”, after touching on discovery and distribution, this blog digs into retries.
Published: Jan 8, 2018
Like multi-cloud, automation can be (and should be) strategic. In a perfect IT world, we would see the smooth road of (internal) digital transformation follow a predictable path to success. It would start with the selection of platforms and...
Published: Jan 2, 2018
Apps are the strategy upon which business has staked its digital survival, and F5 Labs research shows they will remain under siege in 2018. This year, let’s resolve to be vigilant in their protection, no matter whether they lie over hill in the...
Published: Dec 21, 2017
Lori MacVittie decided to put down in digital ink what the data and technology cycle is showing will be pretty much a given in 2018.
Published: Nov 6, 2017
Whether we like it or not, HTTP is the de facto application transport protocol of the modern age. We use it everywhere. It’s as ubiquitous as IP and TCP, and serves much the same purpose. Its only goal is to transport the digital gold of today’s...
Published: Oct 30, 2017
Back in 1983, a group of like-minded folks in the computer and telecom industries got together to create a detailed specification they called the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI).
Published: Oct 23, 2017
When considering vulnerabilities, remember application security is a stack. You may have heard me say this before, but sometimes we need a reminder that modern applications are never deployed alone.
Published: Oct 19, 2017
The data path contains multiple insertion points at which a WAF can be deployed. But that doesn’t mean every insertion point is a good idea.
Published: Oct 12, 2017
Okay, NetOps. As you’re getting all automated up and scripting your hearts out, it’s time for a gentle reminder about security. I’m not talking about firewalls and WAF or other security services you may be responsible for.
Published: Oct 5, 2017
Learning online is big. Especially for those who self-identify as a developer. If you take a peek at Stack Overflow’s annual developer survey...
Published: Sep 21, 2017
We are, I think it’s safe to say, universally delighted by technology. The mundane is transformed into the magical by the mere introduction of technology. The novelty wears off after a time, of course, but by then there’s some other task that has...
Published: Sep 15, 2017
It has been said – and not just by me – that encrypted malicious code is still malicious code. The encryption does nothing to change that...
Published: Sep 5, 2017
Don’t let anyone tell you hardware doesn’t matter. Hardware is everywhere. In every mobile phone. Every Fitbit and techno-gadget we own. In our cars. In our laptops and tablets. Increasingly, it’s in our appliances. In our watches. And apparently,...
Published: Aug 31, 2017
To untangle the complexity inherent in IT automation today, we need to find a better way to construct the workflows that represent the processes used to deploy, manage, and configure IT infrastructure.
Published: Aug 23, 2017
IT has to embrace standardization of the code that makes IT go or risk creating systems that syphon off the financial and efficacy benefits of IT automation. I spent nearly a decade developing software. Embedded software. Web software....
Published: Aug 7, 2017
In January of 2017, the very popular MongoDB suffered what seems to be becoming a fairly predictable tactic for attackers: taking data hostage. Subsequent investigation noted that for the most part, attackers had exploited … nothing.
Published: Aug 1, 2017
There are two sides to every coin, so the old adage goes. It goes without saying that both sides of the coin are the same color even if they bear different images. So we discovered when we dove into the middle of DevOps and NetOps. W...
Published: Jul 27, 2017
While apps represent opportunities to improve productivity and increase profits, poor performance and annoyed users bring these gains to a halt.
Published: Jul 24, 2017
The slow but steady migration to cloud-based environments has had an impact on many aspects of IT. One we rarely make mention of is administration. But we should.
Published: Jun 20, 2017
App security is a lot of things, but sometimes we need to stop and consider what it isn’t, particularly as the volume and frequency of applications developed and deployed to meet the insatiable demand continues to rise. 1. Not a high priority A...
Published: Jun 1, 2017
We hear a lot about the digital economy and the API economy, but the experience economy is what both are powering.
Published: May 25, 2017
Continuous deployment doesn’t have to mean every change, every time, right away. But it does have to start somewhere. CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) is the domain of developers. It’s the overarching model for improving speed...
Published: May 22, 2017
There is little doubt (in my mind, at least) that the new standard operating model for enterprise organizations is based largely on cloud. I use the term “cloud” as a broad umbrella for both private (on-premises) and public (off-premises) cloud...
Published: May 20, 2017
There's potentially a gulf of pain between using cloud services and successfully using cloud services. How will you know if you're being successful? You need the metrics that match your priorities: agility, TCO, reach and productivity.
Published: May 17, 2017
Applications are moving to public clouds. Maybe not as fast as the market predicted (hoped?), but they are moving.
Published: May 11, 2017
Everyone’s got one (yes, even us) and all of them are enabled by the (other) API economy.
Published: May 8, 2017
Lori MacVittie comments on the evolution of the network, and the next wave of architectures rolling in (that’s serverless).
Published: May 4, 2017
Without the cultural change to a more open, collaborative cross-IT environment, many of the benefits of DevOps can’t be fully realized.
Published: Apr 24, 2017
The integration of virtual (software) based network and application services into the CI/CD pipeline is a lot more real than some might think.
Published: Apr 13, 2017
Throughout history, certain places have been anointed with the term “gateway to the _____.” These locations are famous for being strategically important for the defense of a kingdom or as a pathway to new opportunities.
Published: Mar 28, 2017
Many folks eschew the “cultural” component associated with DevOps. But bound up in “culture” is “communication,” and communication is critical to success not just of DevOps, but for any automation and orchestration efforts in the enterprise.
Published: Mar 23, 2017
The success of SaaS is largely due to companies being able to identify and encapsulate in software commoditized business processes. The same holds true for network and infrastructure teams inside the business.
Published: Mar 20, 2017
For several years now, my cohort Cindy Borovick and I have conducted, compiled, and analyzed thousands of responses from IT professionals across the globe in response to our State of Application Delivery surveys. The primary focus of this survey...
Published: Mar 16, 2017
Executives aren’t nearly as giddy over DevOps as those in the trenches, and the answer may be found in one of these three key concerns.
Published: Mar 9, 2017
SDN, which started out with a roar, was last seen whimpering by the side of the technology highway watching containers and DevOps speed by on their way to an invite-only party in the enterprise without so much as glancing back at the recent...
Published: Mar 6, 2017
Amidst the rush of consumer-facing ads and releases during the 2016 holiday season, Amazon made quite a stir when it announced it was embracing hardware.
Published: Mar 2, 2017
Whether it’s related to home automation or personal fitness, the consumer consumption rate for things shows no signs of stopping.
Published: Feb 27, 2017
From State of Application Delivery 2017 – The transition from HTTP/1x to HTTP/2 is of great interest given its potentially disruptive impact.
Published: Feb 16, 2017
Digital transformation cannot be focused solely on the outside, it must include the inside as well. This year’s buzzword bingo card includes the amorphous phrases “digital transformation” and “API economy.” They have real meanings, but they’re...
Published: Feb 13, 2017
Cloudy insights from the State of Application Delivery 2017 – Control. We use that word a lot. Control yourself! Control your own destiny! Control your financial future. Find out how! Control is a simple word that connotes a very powerful concept...
Published: Jan 10, 2017
We asked 2000+ IT pros about their plans for apps, cloud, app services and security--and what they really think about DevOps & SDN.
Published: Jan 9, 2017
Thanksgiving and … turkey. Christmas and … trees. Containers and …. microservices. If the first word you thought of for each of those matches my expectations, then you’ve fallen prey to over-association in the technology market today.
Published: Dec 28, 2016
A cloud-ready application delivery controller is not your traditional ADC. Available for deployment on custom or COTS hardware, it’s a scalable software-solution supporting both the need for fast, secure, and available delivery and...
Published: Dec 19, 2016
A cloud-ready application delivery controller (ADC) is not your traditional ADC. Available for deployment on custom or COTS hardware, it’s a scalable software-solution supporting both the need for fast, secure, and available delivery and...
Published: Dec 12, 2016
A cloud-ready application delivery controller (ADC) is not your traditional ADC. Available for deployment on custom or COTS hardware, it’s a scalable software-solution supporting both the need for fast, secure, and available delivery and...
Published: Dec 8, 2016
It has been 10 years now since Amazon set the digital world on fire with the introduction of Amazon Web Services. Or as most of us today call it, public cloud. Since then, the landscape has grown increasingly cloudy, with a variety of new models...
Published: Dec 5, 2016
A cloud-ready application delivery controller (ADC) is not your traditional ADC. Available for deployment on custom or COTS hardware, it’s a scalable software-solution supporting both the need for fast, secure, and available delivery and...
Published: Nov 21, 2016
Cyber. Things. Security. DDoS. These are digital disruptions; the modern equivalent of enemies at the gate.
Published: Nov 7, 2016
And scale leads to speed. And speed leads to success. Suppose one engineer can process a change request in two hours. Suppose another engineer can process that change request in 1.5 hours. If they work together, how long will it take for them to...
Published: Oct 10, 2016
Current infrastructure cannot handle the projected explosion of data, connections, and traffic as the world moves into the digital economy. We talk about the digital economy but we don’t often dive into the specifics of what that really means....
Published: Oct 3, 2016
Cloud, compliance, and certifications. It's a complex world out there.
Published: Sep 26, 2016
No, not that kind of speed. The other kind of speed. Velocity, the speed with which applications can be developed and released into production, is a common driver of organizations adopting agile development methodologies and DevOps for...
Published: Sep 16, 2016
To say that Docker’s container technology is experiencing explosive growth and adoption is not mere hyperbole or wishful thinking on the part of its highly vocal advocates. Nary a day goes by that does not include some new use of the technology or...
Published: Aug 29, 2016
For the past few years we (as in the corporate We) have delved into the data center to discover how and why and where enterprises deploy and deliver applications with our State of Application Delivery surveys. We’re focused, of course, on...
Published: Aug 22, 2016
There has emerged two distinct models of “going cloud.” The first, most obvious, is the native approach. Native meaning new, either greenfield or rewritten. The native approach encourages a narrow focus on the application, the assumption being...
Published: Aug 18, 2016
"The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to be a topic of interest. And while consumer oriented gadgets and gizmos tend to make headlines, it’s the behind the scenes, in the data center prep work being conducted by early adopters that remain more..."
Published: Aug 8, 2016
Technology tends to use a lot of words interchangeably, but in some cases, the difference is actually pretty profound.
Published: Aug 1, 2016
You might have figured out that yes, I’m one of those people playing Pokémon Go. Or, as is often the case of late, not playing Pokémon Go. That’s bad, because it also means our youngest is not playing, because as it turns out we’re bot...
Published: Jun 27, 2016
Grand Rapids is the second-largest city in Michigan, located in the lower peninsula (what we in the Midwest refer to more colloquially as “under the bridge”). There are no remarkable landmarks in Grand Rapids, like the Space Needle or the Golden...
Published: Jun 23, 2016
Technology moves quickly. Or maybe it just seems like it moves quickly because new movements, approaches, and architectures are popping up left and right. This month, it’s the sudden rise of “serverless” architectures to the fore of everyone’s...
Published: Jun 15, 2016
The term hybrid, in technology, has come to mean composing some thing from two or more seemingly disparate things. Hybrid cloud, for example, brings together SaaS, IaaS, and on-premise as the basis for a new, diversified corporate computing...
Published: Jun 3, 2016
When we think of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) it usually conjures up images (ha! see what I did there?) of an infrastructure designed to support manageable desktop delivery to vast legions of non-technical users. Because fixing some craz...
Published: May 27, 2016
Cyberattacks are a fact of life for IT teams, but no one wants to deal with the aftermath of a hacker breach. F5, a leader in application security, has teamed with Comtrade Software to provide users with an additional level of clarity into hacke...
Published: May 23, 2016
The study of philosophy, at least in the past, has involved asking questions that seem, on the surface, to be, well, irrelevant. After all, is it really all that important to know “whether a ship that had been restored by replacing every single...
Published: May 16, 2016
There’s a kind of repetitive cycle to everything (or so it seems in hindsight) in which changes in app architectures and usage spur the need for new technologies in the network. Technologies designed to address those challenges that impede the...
Published: May 13, 2016
One of the biggest challenges organizations face today is how to “modernize” their traditional data center to meet increasing demands from the business and users alike.
Published: May 9, 2016
"The most significant data breaches in the last 15 years were a result of application vulnerabilities."
Published: May 2, 2016
Most folks have heard or seen Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. If you aren’t familiar with the concept (or need a refresher), here’s the TL;DR – Maslow believed that people are motivated to achieve certain needs. He defined a five level hierarchy...
Published: Apr 11, 2016
Anyone who has studied philosophy and in particular, logic, knows that there are wide range of logical fallacies that ultimately undermine one’s argument. Most people are probably familiar with the ad hominem fallacy, which attempts to repudiate...
Published: Mar 28, 2016
Back in the day (I’m talking 2003 here, so way back in technology years) a lot of hopes and dreams for a more seamless identity management experience were high. That was when Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) was first coming into vogue...
Published: Mar 23, 2016
It’s no secret to those who engage in actual fishing (for real, live fish) that timing matters. Certain types of fish are more active and thus likely to be caught in the morning, others in the evening, and still others in the early afternoon. It...
Published: Mar 21, 2016
Once you realize that load balancing with modern, programmable proxies is more than just scale or availability, you start recognizing its potential as part of the application architecture itself.
Published: Mar 18, 2016
OpenStack is making its way into production. In OpenStack’s sixth user survey, it found that 60% of deployments were there, in production. That’s compared to only 32% a mere two years earlier. That’s in part thanks to the steady growth of...
Published: Feb 25, 2016
As is the case with every technology that comes to dominate data center conversations, DevOps is currently suffering from definition fatigue. Actually at this point I think it’s exhaustion, but the line between the two is difficult to determine....
Published: Feb 12, 2016
How Standardization Enables a Customizable Per-App (Microservices) Approach to App Security
Published: Feb 8, 2016
The global SDN market will be worth $12.5 billion by 2020...
Published: Feb 7, 2016
Having watched the ebb and flow of technology trends over the past, well, many years, I’ve come to the conclusion that that the very first thing that drives adoption of new technology is all about costs. When cloud was first introduced, surv...
Published: Jan 25, 2016
With the end of the year came the traditional spate of predictions and forecasts from trade publications, pundits, and analysts alike. Among these were the number-laden forecasts for IT budgets in 2016. None of which were particularly impressive...
Published: Jan 18, 2016
It’s a digital world. That’s pretty obvious. But it’s also a rich and robust digital world that offers us a vast array of information consumable in a variety of formats. Some prefer the written word, consuming information in traditional white...
Published: Jan 18, 2016
The need for scalability isn’t even a question these days. The answer is always yes, you need it. Business growth depends on operational growth of the applications that are, after all, part and parcel of today’s business models – no matter what...
Published: Jan 15, 2016
The mere mention of security as an inhibitor to cloud adoption can often cause the experts to roll their eyes and sigh dramatically. And while it’s true that security where cloud is concerned has come a long way, it’s still true that as far a...
Published: Dec 21, 2015
As early as 2009, when cloud was just beginning to rise ascendant as the technology most likely to disrupt, well, everything, many of us began looking at the problem of consistency at the infrastructure level. Under the moniker of “infrastructure...
Published: Dec 16, 2015
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...
Published: Dec 14, 2015
It’s only sort of true that people are the weakest link in the information security chain. The truly weakest link is the browser. That’s because the browser is one of those apps that no one really pays much attention too, likely because in most...
Published: Dec 14, 2015
Scalability is a critical capability for both business and applications. On the business side, scaling operations is key to enabling the new app economy...
Published: Dec 7, 2015
It is natural to assume that when we see a padlock icon in our browsers that the site is using SSL to secure our communications. It’s also apparently a signal to consumers that the site is, in fact, secure. So much so that according to the CA...
Published: Nov 23, 2015
Smart leggings. A portable Gluten sensor. Wireless speaker in a light bulb. The number of “things” invading the market today is incredible, and every day brings something new and perhaps unexpected. The sheer volume...
Published: Nov 16, 2015
I’m often asked after speaking at conferences just what dog F5 has in the race. Of late, that topic is usually DevOps or related to DevOps in some way. The reality is that application-affine services like load balancing are being pulled toward...
Published: Nov 9, 2015
A wide variety of HTTP-based attacks can (and should) be prevented in your application. The OWASP Top 10 is a prime example of attack techniques that are both detectable and preventable from within any application. A plethora of tools including...
Published: Nov 2, 2015
The network is forking. Bifurcating. Dispersing. You’re welcome to use whatever term you’d like to use to describe the phenomenon of network services relocating from the quiet suburb that is the corporate network to hectic and noisy urban quarters...
Published: Oct 26, 2015
The world of the application developer and the network architect could not be more different except, perhaps, in the way in which they each view the other’s domain. A typical network perspective of an application deployment often looks like...
Published: Oct 19, 2015
As virtualization began to take hold there were a variety of metrics proposed for measuring success. Consolidation ratios, admins to virtual machine ratios, time to provision, and percentage of servers virtualized were among the most commonly used...
Published: Oct 5, 2015
When I say “app services” or, to use the more common networking-oriented moniker, “L4-7 services”, what do you think of? Wait, let me guess. You thought of: load balancing caching WAN optimization Am I (at least mostly) right? Those are the...
Published: Sep 21, 2015
It’s an application world. That’s beginning to sound trite and cliché, but it’s still true. When it comes to security, that means our focus should start with the application and work our way out towards the user. But that’s not how we build...
Published: Sep 14, 2015
Keep the hot side hot and the cold side cold. You may recall (if you’re old enough and no, don’t worry, I won’t ask you to raise your hand) a campaign years ago by McDonald’s promoting packaging of some of its products that kept the “hot side hot...
Published: Sep 7, 2015
There are many more attributes that can be gleaned from a seemingly simple application request than may at first meet the eye. There is, of course, IP address. From which can be determined one’s location. That’s geolocation and it’s fairly...
Published: Aug 24, 2015
We are living in, as the Chinese proverb-curse says, interesting times. A growing awareness of confidentiality and integrity has led to a groundswell of efforts to, in effect, encrypt “all the things.” Whether it’s web sites and applications (SSL...
Published: Aug 10, 2015
When someone says “mobile app” it’s likely they think of consumer-facing apps. Social apps. Sharing apps. Games. Banking. Maps. Apps are engagement. Apps are revenue. Apps are profit. But that’s only half the story. The other half is only visible...
Published: Jul 27, 2015
Jim Metzler recently penned an excellent conversation-starting article asking, "Does NFV have a place in the enterprise?" He notes, among other arguments, "I don’t know of any enterprise that currently has, or that ever will,...
Published: Jul 20, 2015
James Ward, who writes code (his description), recently wrote up a great piece in which he compared application deployment today versus ten years ago. One of the better kept secrets in the IT industry at large is that changes in application...
Published: Jul 13, 2015
Load balancing. It’s commonly accepted that we need it, rely on it, and use it every day to scale up (and hopefully down) applications. It’s become critical infrastructure responsible for not only scaling to meet demand but ensuring the continued...
Published: Jul 2, 2015
Malware. It’s come to be a significant factor in attacks against both corporate and consumer assets. It continues to result in millions of dollars in fraud while simultaneously chipping away at consumer trust in financial and banki...
Published: Jun 29, 2015
It’s an application world. One of the consequences, intended or not, is a change in how we measure success. Today’s measurements are in downloads and installs instead of foot traffic; in microseconds and uptime percentages instead of cost per...
Published: Jun 15, 2015
Data center models are changing. A variety of technical trends and business demands are forcing that change, most of them centered on the explosive growth of applications. That means, in turn, that the requirements for application delivery are...
Published: Jun 11, 2015
At DevOps Summit NY there’s been a whole lot of talk about not just DevOps, but containers, IoT, and microservices. Sessions focused not just on the cultural shift needed to grow at scale with a DevOps approach, but also made sure to include the...
Published: Jun 8, 2015
Enterprise applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange, along with VDI, continue to serve as the backbone of your business. Productivity, while not as sexy as profit, is a key factor in the success of business operations today. Failure to...
Published: Jun 1, 2015
Okay, kids. It's time we had "that talk". You know the one, the one you've been whispering about with your friends but heretofore were afraid to actually ask about because of course everyone else knows about it and you didn't...
Published: May 25, 2015
Conferences agendas. Event navigation. Specific tasks, like buying a house or getting a car loan. If you've installed an app for any of these things you've installed what's known as a "disposable mobile app" or DMA. App...
Published: May 20, 2015
The goal of F5 Synthesis is to deliver the app services that deliver the apps business relies on today for productivity and for profit. That means not just delivering SDAS (Software Defined Application Services) themselves, but delivering them ...
Published: May 11, 2015
No, this isn't a tirade on the security of IoT. It's about story about change. Specifically, change and its implications on security. Change is constant. There's a million different axioms and proverbs about change, so it's...