F5 Networks has launched F5 Ready to give customers a choice of cloud environment when deploying Apps into the cloud.
The programme verifies that F5 BIG-IP virtual edition is compatible with a growing number of pubic cloud service providers. To date F5 has certified with AWS, Bluelock, BT, Cisco Intercloud, Datacom, Dimension Data, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, SingleHop, Skytap, and VMware vCloud Air.
What is interesting about this list is that it excludes some of the bigger players in the market. IBM SoftLayer, Google, HP Helion, AT&T, Deutsche Telecom and OVH are all conspicuous by their absence. F5 does say that it will continue to add cloud providers from around the world and this will be important.
The increasing demand for data sovereignty is bringing a lot more smaller and local cloud providers back into play as the hyper-scale player struggle to adjust to large numbers of smaller cloud locations. Most of these providers are taking on OpenStack based environments which should make it easier for F5 to extend the F5 Ready programme almost on customer demand.
F5 Ready will support Bring Your Own Licence (BYOL)
One of the things that cloud offers customers from an application perspective is the ability to switch where they host or get their hosted application from. Networks and cloud have become fast enough to support apps in the cloud and data on site. To support customers who may want to move between their own private cloud, different public cloud providers and build a flexible hybrid cloud F5 are offering a range of licencing options.
According to the press release there are three options for customers:
- Bring Your Own License (BYOL) is portable, making it easy to extend existing BIG-IP virtual edition investments to and across cloud environments.
- The F5 Cloud Licensing Program enables utility (pay-as-you-go) billing and annual subscriptions to support temporary deployments (like app development and testing) or for customers who prefer an OpEx model.
- F5 Volume Licensing Subscription is a subscription licensing option for volume deployments, offering cost savings of up to 67% with BIG-IP virtual editions.
In a quote from the press release Alex Rublowsky, Sr. Director, Licensing Business Models at F5 said: “Organisations going to the cloud want to know that they don’t have to give up their valuable application services to get there.
“Through the F5 Ready program, customers can keep their trusted security, availability, and acceleration services—even as they evaluate cloud service providers, combine technologies from multiple vendors, and look to scale additional application resources to public cloud environments.”
Conclusion
F5 Networks is taking an interesting approach to customers wanting to accelerate and protect their applications. Having recognised that customers want to move to the cloud it has begun to certify its solutions on different cloud environments.
What will be interesting is how well it manages to reach out to the smaller cloud providers, especially in Europe and Asia. If it acts quickly it could end up taking a significant market share in this space
