I D C

T E C H N O L O G Y

S P O T L I G H T

The Role of Integrated Netw ork Services in

Next-Generation Application Deliver y
December 2013
Adapted from Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Datacenter Networks, 2012 by Rohit Mehra,
Brad Casemore, IDC #238681

Sponsored by F5 Networks
Cloud computing and the "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend will impact the design of future
datacenters and their supporting networks. To attain the kind of business agility that companies now
demand, network infrastructure, including higher-layer network and security services, needs to
provide the flexibility required by cloud application workloads and the changing traffic patterns
fostered by BYOD. To make networks more agile, new approaches to network implementation need
to be enabled, including automation and orchestration tools that can optimize resource provisioning
and consistently apply policies across workloads and platforms. As these trends continue, application
delivery controllers (ADCs) will be critical elements in the new network infrastructure. These
capabilities can be integrated into a holistic solution via the higher-order concept of intelligent
services. With these capabilities in place, enterprises can enjoy the benefits of integrated security,
reduced costs, and increased performance and scalability. This Technology Spotlight examines these
trends and the role that F5 Networks' integrated scalable platform plays in this strategic market.

Introduction
As the 3rd Platform evolution continues, cloud computing, mobility, social networks, and
Big Data/analytics now represent the major trends driving the IT industry forward. However, as
this paradigm shift unfolds, IT decision makers and network administrators are facing significant
challenges, including planning for their respective impacts on enterprise network performance.
Cloud adoption in the enterprise is growing rapidly and changing business and technology models
across the entire IT industry. IDC research shows that worldwide revenue from public IT cloud
services exceeded $21.5 billion in 2010 and will reach $72.9 billion in 2015, representing a compound
annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6%.
In addition, data from IDC's 2012 WAN Manager Survey indicates that over 20% of U.S. businesses
are currently using cloud services for a host of applications, including backup and recovery, data
storage, and establishing capacity flexibility for workloads. At the top of the list of cloud computing
benefits is the ability to provide a dynamic environment for increased business agility, lower total cost
of ownership, and increased process efficiency.
Another key trend is the BYOD phenomenon driven by the consumerization of IT and the proliferation
of employee-owned devices, including laptops, smartphones, and tablets. This is having significant
impacts on the enterprise as users tap into a host of innovative applications and data sourced from
the Web. Many employees now routinely work with three or four devices in the course of a normal
business day, and their popular use is generating a huge number of new end-user applications.
However, this technology shift, in conjunction with the sheer diversity of devices involved, is creating
entirely new traffic patterns in the enterprise network.

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These radical shifts in the nature of the compute model itself are progressing rapidly and will impact
the design of future datacenters and their supporting networks. They will also create a specific set of
challenges for management, application performance, application availability, and security.
One of the foremost drivers of these shifts is the need to increase business agility. To attain the kind
of operational agility that companies now demand, network infrastructure, including higher-layer
network and security services, needs to provide a new level of flexibility to accommodate cloud
application workloads and the changing traffic patterns associated with BYOD. The next generation of
integrated application-delivery solutions will play a key role in developing more agile network
functions and capabilities.

Network Requirements for Emerging BYOD and Cloud Deployments

Developing a more agile network requires that new approaches to network design and
implementation be enabled. Datacenter networks are becoming software defined, programmable, and
virtualized. While the software-defined network (SDN) will play a key role in this transformation, so
will the development of cutting-edge approaches to network operations and management based on
this concept. The emerging reality is that enterprise IT managers cannot afford to wait for the full
fruition of SDN to deal with these challenges.
These new approaches should include enhanced automation and orchestration tools that can enable
unified workflows, standardize and optimize resource provisioning, and consistently define and apply
policies across workloads and platforms. It is of critical importance that network services be in
alignment from the datacenter to the cloud provider.
Management and orchestration solutions will be critical for the advancement of cloud deployments.
An important aspect here is the ability to automate network service availability and to ensure
seamless alignment between network services in the enterprise (i.e., the private cloud) and those that
interface with them in the public cloud.
As cloud and BYOD become more pervasive, their respective implementations will also have
numerous implications for network security. For example, the concept of a perimeter that serves as
the foundation of traditional firewall architecture is rapidly becoming obsolete. One simple reason for
this is that mobile users and their devices constantly stray beyond the perimeter. As a result, the
real-world parameters of the enterprise datacenter have been blurred. Further, as cloud computing is
increasingly adopted by enterprises, it will involve more ambiguous boundaries between public and
private resources.
As cloud services and BYOD trends continue apace, IDC believes that ADCs will be critical elements
in the new network infrastructure being developed to address emerging performance requirements.
In this context, it's important to recognize that traditional approaches, characterized by the use
of firewalls and legacy ADC devices, are unable to solve the problem of mobile proliferation
(i.e., managing more endpoints across the far-flung network).
The good news is that, moving beyond the limitations of point solutions, newer firewall concepts have
been introduced into the market. These approaches are characterized by, among other things, the
integration of additional functionality such as network intrusion detection. Adopting them will foster
more application awareness for network operators in addition to offering standard firewall features
that move them closer to a unified threat management (UTM) type of solution. Moreover, newer,
more integrated ADC approaches and frameworks can also offer improved automation and
orchestration to optimize resource provisioning.

2013 IDC

The Benefits of Integrated Approaches to Application Delivery

IT organizations need orchestration solutions that can implement consistent policies and network and
security service models in both cloud and legacy infrastructure. These solutions need to address
elastic scaling of network services in both private and public cloud environments. Application
awareness of network and security services can help ensure fast performance, high availability, and
optimum security for these applications. These capabilities can be integrated into a holistic solution
via the higher-order concept of intelligent services.
An optimized services orchestration environment can serve to reduce the time needed to provision
services for application delivery. In addition, enterprises and service providers can offer self-service
portals with a broad array of service options. With these capabilities in place, enterprises can enjoy
the benefits of aligned and consistent network services support. Other benefits include reduced costs
as well as increased performance and scalability.
An intelligent services approach can be implemented to manage cloud and mobile application
delivery. End users can be effectively managed from any location and on any device. This approach
supports the cloud model by applying application delivery policies to all requests. Further, it connects
those requests to applications, regardless of where they reside. It also ensures availability, a
paramount concern in any enterprise application rollout.
Application awareness allows network operators to see how the application looks and performs on
the network. Point products aren't capable of addressing all application delivery services concurrently
and can't provide visibility across the entire infrastructure, from the application to the end user. In
addition, user awareness provides the ability to see user interactions with applications and devices.
Intelligent services also encompass the notion of integrated security. The benefits of integrated
security include reducing network complexity and providing ease of installation as well as lowering
capital and operational costs. Another key benefit to integrated approaches is reducing complexity via
device consolidation.

Considering F5 Networks' Integrated Scalable Platform

F5 Networks is an application delivery and security networking company based in Seattle,
Washington. The company focuses on integrating application technologies to provide greater scale,
security, and simplicity for Internet and Web infrastructures. The intent is to improve application
delivery by providing users with secure accelerated access to enterprise and cloud-based
applications and giving control back to IT to scale application infrastructure when and where needed.
F5 Networks' integrated application delivery platform enables customers to apply business policies at
strategic points of control across IT infrastructure and into the public cloud. It provides the following
capabilities:

Scales the application delivery infrastructure based on application and business policies

Manages application delivery for on- and off-premise apps accessed by multiple devices

Manages from any location on any device

Acts as a full proxy between users and applications

Provides application user and resource awareness

Offers management and control across the entire network

2013 IDC

Mobile optimization, access management, and application delivery firewall functionality can be
provided using a single platform. In terms of security, F5's integrated application delivery platform
protects edge, infrastructure, and applications. It is designed to scale throughout the datacenter and
out to off-premise locations such as the cloud.
BIG-IQ Cloud is at the heart of the scalable platform and is designed to help reduce provisioning by
orders of magnitude. Moving beyond point solutions, BIG-IQ Cloud provides a management interface
and automates and orchestrates BIG-IP network services for cloud deployments. The goal is to
manage intelligent services, reduce cost, and provide agility. Other features and benefits include
scalability, security, and content awareness.
The BIG-IQ platform hosts two modules: Cloud and Security. BIG-IQ Cloud provides capabilities and
features designed to enable enterprises to adapt flexibly to the application delivery requirements of
cloud computing. In cloud-bursting applications, BIG-IQ's support for both physical and virtual BIG-IP
platforms is designed to facilitate flexible expansion of the network fabric between private and public
clouds, ensuring that network services are in alignment and that SLAs can be satisfied.
BIG-IQ is designed to centrally manage BIG-IP platforms spanning datacenters (inter-datacenter
applications) while supporting multitenancy across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Through its
APIs, BIG-IQ can integrate with cloud orchestration platforms such as OpenStack. Cloud connectors
to major cloud service providers, including VMware and Amazon, are designed to address the
challenges of cloud service provisioning. The goal is streamlining the application life cycle and
decreasing operational costs related to simplified infrastructure management.

Challenges
While a leading vendor of ADCs with a rich history in Layer 47 services, F5 faces new challenges in
an era of increasing infrastructure virtualization and the concomitant growth of cloud computing. One
challenge involves simply being able to adapt and extend its product portfolio to meet the changing
requirements associated with the intersection of the private cloud and the public cloud. Traffic
patterns and requirements are changing, and cloud applications, many of which demand support for
multitenancy and virtual machine (VM) mobility, often need network services (such as load balancing)
to be delivered as virtual appliances rather than in a traditional physical form factor.
With its BIG-IP family, F5 provides both hardware appliances and virtual appliances (BIG-IP VE).
With BIG-IP's integrated platform, F5 now adds the capability of providing service delivery alignment
through cloud interconnects, which support service portability between clouds. At the same time, F5
is meeting new competitive challenges, not only from established market rivals in the traditional
Layer 47 switching marketplace but also from start-ups and service-oriented cloud players that are
looking to capitalize on market disruption. Amid this change, many customers are uncertain about
how best to proceed. As such, they require education and professional services to help them
understand shifting business and technology requirements.

Conclusion
Developing a more agile network requires that new approaches to network design and
implementation be put into place. Network services need to be in alignment from the datacenter to
the cloud provider. Management and orchestration solutions will be critical for the advancement of
cloud technology and mobile device support going forward. An important part of the solution to this
issue is developing the ability to automate network service availability and to ensure seamless
alignment between network services in the enterprise (private cloud) and those that interface with
them in the public cloud.

2013 IDC

Improved automation and orchestration tools are needed to standardize and optimize resource
provisioning. Such tools can be used to enable unified workflows and consistently define and apply
policies across workloads and platforms. F5 Networks' integrated scalable platform is designed to
address many of these challenges. To the extent that F5 addresses the challenges described in this
paper, IDC believes the company is well positioned for success in this market.

A B O U T

T H I S

P U B L I C A T I O N

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2013 IDC