F5 intros Big IP v11 in India, to ramp-up India ops

BANGALORE, INDIA: Application delivery networking service provider F5 Networks announced version 11 of its BIG-IP product family.

BIG-IP is a system of integrated application delivery services, and the latest version does load balancing, SSL offload, web acceleration, network security, application security, network security, and access control.

Also Read: F5 BIG-IP: A unified application delivery

It provides a comprehensive view of users, applications, and the network with which organizations can deploy applications up to 100 times faster, claims the company.

It also enables application-specific configurations to move with applications as new instances are created locally, virtually, or in the cloud.

“As applications are virtualized and deployed in the cloud, the network becomes an integral part of the application delivery infrastructure and ultimately defines user productivity,” said Anil Pochiraju, managing director, F5 Networks India. “With the rise of virtualization, an organization can go from a bare metal server to a running application in just minutes. However, it might take days if not weeks to provision the underlying network and application delivery services to make that application production-ready and available to users."

F5 solutions now provide application-specific intelligence for Oracle, Microsoft, SAP and also extends support to VMware, IBM, Citrix, HP clouds.

"With Big-IP v11, F5 changes the traditional network paradigm and makes it as simple to provision the application delivery network as it is to create new virtual machines. BIG-IP v11’s application control plane architecture aligns application control, visibility, and manageability, and allows additional services to be added on demand as current conditions require,” he added.

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The company, which launched the version 10 two years back, is bringing various other features also along with its new version. They include:

BIG-IP Edge Client: A full SSL VPN solution that provides comprehensive security and mobile access for all devices running Android 4.x (codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich).

Pochiraju noted that all F5 devices can act as network firewalls as well. The company, which is today ICSA certified, does not see a reason it should not be there in IPSEC or firewall or SSL VPN space or in general network security space as well.

However, he clarified that F5 does not want to play in the enterprise firewall space, instead would like to make it big in the internet data centre firewall space, where it sees Juniper as its sole competitor.

ScaleN: It enables users to scale up or scale out on demand. It also enables multi-way clustering between devices to create a pool of application delivery services that is both elastic and highly resilient.

Virtual Clustered Multiprocessing (vCMP) technology: This combines virtualization and multi-tenancy capabilities to simultaneously run multiple instances of BIG-IP solutions on a single device.

iApps technology: This simplifies deployment of application service. DevCentral community will provide technical expertise, guidance, and collaboration opportunities for developing, sharing, and customizing iApp templates.

F5 India outlook



F5, which began its India operations in August 2010 and saw over 200 per cent year-on-year growth over the two years, is all set to expand its business in the country with a focus on IT/ITeS, BFSI, telecom and the government sectors. Its customer base, in the country, includes Dhanalakshmi Bank, State Bank of India (SBI), Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL), and MakeMyTrip.

Though the company declined to comment on country specific growth rate, however, noted that Asia Pacific-Japan (APJ) region contributed 26 per cent to its global revenue, last fiscal. Pochiraju also added that India forms a significant contributor in this region and even outgrew the APJ region in terms of growth rate.