Recently I was sorting through a pile of pictures—dating back to the 20th century. The interesting thing is that not only do the clothes and settings of the photos give you clues to the decade, but the photos themselves also give clues to the photography technology and business models of the time.
- The black and white pictures from the older generations, much like the ones you see in finding your roots.
- The grainy polaroids of the 1970s.
- The doubles of every single picture—good or bad—you got for “free” in the 1990s.
And then we get into today’s generation of pictures where only the most perfect “Instagram ready” are deemed worthy of crossing the barrier to the real world of print.
Evolution of the app delivery and security market
When I think about the early days of application delivery and security, I think about basics like our black and white pictures. Deploy a load balancer and firewall appliances in your single data center and consider your apps secure and available.
Through the years, new tiers and new services emerged to protect and deliver modern apps, modern architectures, and cloud operating models. Server virtualization expanded the application delivery controller (ADC) market with the introduction of ADC software. The ADC software market segment increased from $11 million in 2010 to reach $729 million in 2020, a 53% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Cloud services expanded the ADC market with the introduction of ADC as a Service. The ADC as a Service market segment increased from $129 million in 2015 to $5.2 billion in 2025, a 45% CAGR according to IDC.
The impact of AI
Today, in the State of Application Strategy, 96% of respondents told us they are deploying AI models. As in the past, new applications, new deployment models, and new locations will expand the need for application delivery and security. Well-established application delivery and security services (e.g., load balancing, WAF) as well as new application delivery and security services (e.g., AI gateway & AI data loss prevention) will be required to support AI.
Already, Web Application and API Protection Platforms (WAAP) are front and center, with nine out of ten respondents seeing WAAP services as critical to protecting AI models, up from 77% a year ago.
Further, AI is opening additional tiers for application delivery and security services to be deployed in front of the AI factory. Currently, over half of respondents are deploying global server load balancing in this new AI north-south tier, with over one third reporting usage of DNS, service mesh, AI gateways, API security, and bot management.
As with our pictures, we use and value every generation of application delivery and security as we make sure we adapt to new requirements. How big will AI application delivery and security be? If current AI projects hold true, I think the AI ADC market will fall between the $1 billion server virtualization added to the ADC market and the $5 billion added by the cloud—and likely closer to the former.
You can think through your own analysis using this year’s research by clicking this helpful, handy link and getting your own copy of the complete State of Application Strategy 2025 Report.
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