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  • The Fourth Seat at the IT Service Velocity Table

    The Fourth Seat at the IT Service Velocity Table

    Agile. Devops. SDN.

    Development. Operations. Network.

    Notice anything missing? How about security? On the one hand, that could be because we’ve finally managed to realize that security is an integral part of every aspect of IT and it’s by default embraced by the other three groups already.

    I’ll pause while you stop laughing and catch your breath.

    On the other hand, it could be because it’s like every other technological movement and advancement and we’ve simply plowed ahead without considering security until, as is always the case, someone remembers that security is important too. If development, operations and the network teams are going to have an answer to improving the speed with which applications get from the IDE to the end-user’s iPhone, then shouldn’t security have a seat at that table, too?

    Absolutely.

    It can be argued, in fact, that some areas of security already have a seat at the service velocity table. Consider automated pen testing, virtual patching and continuous vulnerability assessment services. These are often continuous processes that integrate (sometimes) with existing systems or, at a minimum, with some process through which aberrations can be noted and addressed.

    It’s important to note that this – and devops – isn’t a plea for automation. Automation and orchestration are tools in a toolbox that may or may not be a fit for a particular tasks or process. Most enterprise organizations, for example, refuse to automate changes to data center firewall rules. Not because it can’t be done – it can – but because the ramifications of a change going wrong is too great to take even the small risk that might be incurred.

    But in the interests of speeding up the deployment process (in which security is – or should be – a significant player) there are likely adjustments that can be made to align security with other groups already adopting more agile methodologies.

    For example, consider that along with agile development often comes a “nightly build” of the software, designed to ensure that changes don’t break the complete package. It might be beneficial for application security-focused assessments to be inserted into that process, to test early and often the security profile of the software being developed. This helps in two ways: first, it ensures that developers can be made aware of potential vulnerabilities while they’re actively developing the software. That’s important because one of the precepts of agile is move quickly and by the time you’ve found a vulnerability in the released software the developers are already half way through the next spring and not thinking about what they just tossed over the wall.

    Second, if there are vulnerabilities that turn up that developers can’t, for some reason, address you have a head start in figuring out how to mitigate them. If that requires a security service of some kind, you’ve got time to get the right policies into place before the application hits the Internet and becomes a target.

    There are plenty of ways in which agile methodologies can be adopted by security professionals. One of the precepts of devops is getting outside the silos that exist within the organization and communicating with the other folks seated at the “get the application to the user” table. Being more involved with development and operations and even the network will enable security to integrate more fluidly with the increasingly agile processes that drive the application lifecycle.

  • F5 Delivers on Its Synthesis Vision to Accelerate the Expansion of Mobile Broadband

    F5’s reference architectures and solutions enable service providers to optimize, secure, and monetize their mobile networks

    SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–F5 Networks (NASDAQ:FFIV) announced today offerings and reference architectures that extend its F5 Synthesis™ framework and bring new benefits to service providers. F5 will be showcasing these reference architectures and demonstrating the benefits of its service provider offerings at Mobile World Congress, taking place next week in Barcelona.

    F5 Synthesis provides an elastic services platform to help service providers effectively scale their networks and realize the benefits of emerging technologies such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) by delivering Software Defined Application Services™ (SDAS™). SDAS leverage F5’s fabric-based approach by efficiently and intelligently combining virtualization, scalability, programmability, orchestration, and other capabilities.

    The F5 Synthesis vision leverages core F5 technologies—including those announced earlier this week—and enhanced service provider solutions focused on the data, signaling, and application planes to further enable the secure, optimized, and orchestrated delivery of application services. F5 helps service providers adopt service-driven business practices, empowered by policy, subscriber identity, Diameter signaling, and other context- and application-aware solutions. Moreover, by delivering services in an efficient, unified manner, innovative service provider products aid organizations in managing and monetizing the way services are introduced to the market.

    As an architectural framework, F5 Synthesis:

    • Combines physical, virtual, and cloud-based deployments to form a unified, elastic high-performance services fabric. This enables more efficient network architectures for service providers and an optimized migration path to advanced LTE services and emerging technologies like NFV.
    • Provides agile, orchestrated application service creation and automation capabilities through the dynamic programmability of SDAS via open REST-based APIs, allowing integration with third-party management and orchestration systems.
    • Offers F5 application services with flexible licensing models to make it cost-effective for service providers to extend valuable services for all applications on demand, with the agile technology fabric scaling as needed.
    • Enables dynamic, multilayer security across networks, applications, and devices.
    • Delivers advanced “application-driven” capabilities, service experiences, and improved economics for service providers by significantly reducing TCO for critical services and accelerating the delivery of revenue-generating VAS.1
    • Aligns and complies with current and developing industry practices. F5 is supportive of standards and guidance affecting service providers, including IETF, 3GPP, GSMA, ETSI NFV, and SDN-related standards such as ONF.
    • Supplies service provider-focused reference architectures that deliver prescriptive guidance on how to address evolving business challenges.

    KEY BENEFITS

    New F5 technologies and solutions continue to augment the company’s traffic and signaling management solutions portfolio, enabling service providers to cost-effectively build and scale their networks, achieve high service velocity and quality of experience for customers, and further monetize the network by introducing innovative services and business models. The unified F5 Synthesis architectural framework transforms the economics, experience, and enablement of application services for service providers by:

    • Unleashing Broadband Services for Optimum Performance –F5 is the leading vendor in providing intelligent service chaining, dynamic policy enforcement, Diameter routing and interworking, and DNS functionality to enable new services and business models, and enhance mobile broadband capabilities.
    • Enabling Multilayer Security for Maximum Protection –To support more flexible capabilities, LTE networks are inherently less secure than their 3G and 2G predecessors. This can open up mobile networks to a greater number of significant threats, while mobile operators are increasingly being expected to offer enhanced protection for users, network, and applications in concert. F5’s security solutions are designed to protect end-user devices, networks, and cloud deployments with industry-leading performance and scale.
    • Delivering Future-Proof Scale and Extensibility for Ultimate Value – F5 gives organizations a multiservice platform that provides important network services, such as security, policy enforcement, local DNS, IPv6 migration, and content filtering, with additional granular control over traffic policies and steering provided by programmable iRules® capabilities. F5 delivers unrivaled scale and extensibility to offer further investment protection looking forward.
    • Providing Integration Points with an Ecosystem of Technology Partners – F5’s comprehensive programmability and APIs provide enhanced opportunities for technology partners to collaborate on joint offerings and interoperability. F5 solutions have undergone extensive evaluation to promote seamless integration with technology partners in the next-generation service provider ecosystem.

    DEPLOYMENT GUIDANCE WITH SERVICE PROVIDER-FOCUSED REFERENCE ARCHITECTURES

    As a complement to its Synthesis framework, F5 provides a growing library of reference architectures designed to help service providers address some of the industry’s most pervasive challenges. Individual reference architectures provide prescriptive guidance focused on efficiently deploying SDAS to achieve a specific business purpose.

    F5 reference architectures designed for service providers include:

    • S/Gi Network Simplification – The F5 solution simplifies S/Gi design and operations while also offering advanced content- and subscriber-aware features. Service providers can consolidate multiple services such as advanced firewall solutions, DNS, IPv6 carrier-grade NAT migration, policy enforcement, and intelligent traffic steering to enable dynamic service function chaining.
    • Security for Service Providers – Dynamic, intelligent security is implemented at the network, session, and application layers, with centralized command and distributed control. F5’s unified service delivery platform offers unmatched scalability, capacity, and performance to simplify security architectures and reduce TCO.
    • LTE Roaming – A Diameter signaling solution seamlessly enables roaming from LTE systems in a secure manner. F5’s LTE Roaming solution uses an advanced Diameter Edge Agent (DEA) for high-performance subscriber- and context-awareness for operators and IPX providers while delivering enhanced quality of experience for subscribers.
    • Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) – F5’s solution for NFV architectures helps leverage the benefits of cloud and SDN within the service provider network environment. In addition to delivering capabilities such as load balancing and global server load balancing that are essential for NFV to succeed, F5 technologies provide a unified, orchestrated environment to realize the full benefits of a virtualized service infrastructure.

    SUPPORTING QUOTES

    “S/Gi network simplification, LTE roaming, voice over LTE, security, and NFV are very important topics for service providers to look at over the next few years in considering their next-generation mobile network deployments. We are pleased to see F5 Synthesis addressing important issues within the industry.”

    Vic McClelland, Managing Director of Networks, Optus

    “As mobile operators continue to deploy LTE (4G) and look further towards 5G networks, scaling and securing the data, signaling, and application planes become increasingly important. F5 Synthesis binds these three realms to provide an architectural framework to address critical issues for mobile operators.”

    Dimitris Mavrakis, Principal Analyst, Telecoms & Media, Informa

    “Service providers are going through a fundamental architectural shift to SDN and NFV, which increases the importance of automating the scalability, security, virtualization, and programmability of their networks. In our view, F5 is the first in the industry to focus this shift on the mobile broadband segment across the data, signaling, and application planes, with the aim of helping providers with flexible scaling and rapid service introductions. We believe that service providers will want to look at how F5 software can help them develop new service and business models that will increase their ability to monetize mobile broadband.”

    Michael Howard, Principal Analyst, Infonetics Research

    “Service providers have traditionally deployed many stateful session-based devices on their S/Gi network, which are inherently not high capacity or are very expensive to scale to sufficient levels to meet growing bandwidth demands of 4G/LTE and 5G/Advanced LTE networks. With F5’s S/Gi network simplification solution, service providers can consolidate these disparate functions into one platform and scale to meet future bandwidth demands, in turn reducing TCO by 36 percent over five years compared to their traditional approach.”

    Dr. Ray Mota, Managing Partner, ACG Research

    “The explosive growth of always-connected devices running thousands of applications is requiring service providers to rethink how services are offered, scaled, and monetized. Virtualization and orchestration within a flexible architectural framework will become increasingly important as service providers look to build seamless Application Delivery Networks.”

    Patrick Donegan, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading

    “Changes in the service provider market are being driven by the desire for services that better address new economic models and customers’ evolving interests. The F5 Synthesis framework provides a unified technology fabric and intelligent services orchestration, enabling service providers to accelerate the transition from just providing connectivity to delivering enhanced, differentiated mobile experiences for subscribers.”

    Dr. Mallik Tatipamula, VP of Service Provider and Cloud Solutions, F5 Networks

    F5 AT MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS

    F5 will be exhibiting its service provider technologies in Hall 5, Stand 5G11, at this year’s Mobile World Congress event, taking place February 24–27 in Barcelona. In addition, the F5 Traffix™ Signaling Delivery Controller™ has been shortlisted for recognition in the Best Mobile Infrastructure segment of the Global Mobile Awards 2014, presented at the event.

    SUPPORTING RESOURCES

    AVAILABILITY

    The F5 solutions and reference architectures mentioned in this announcement are generally available now. Please contact a local F5 sales office for product availability in specific countries.

    [1] ACG Research, Business Case for S/Gi Network Simplification, February 2014

    ABOUT F5

    F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) provides solutions for an application world. F5 helps organizations seamlessly scale cloud, data center, and software defined networking (SDN) deployments to successfully deliver applications to anyone, anywhere, at any time. F5 solutions broaden the reach of IT through an open, extensible framework and a rich partner ecosystem of leading technology and data center orchestration vendors. This approach lets customers pursue the infrastructure model that best fits their needs over time. The world’s largest businesses, service providers, government entities, and consumer brands rely on F5 to stay ahead of cloud, security, and mobility trends. For more information, go to f5.com.

    You can also follow @f5networks and @F5CSP on Twitter or visit us on Facebook for more information about F5, its partners, and technology.

    F5, F5 Synthesis, Software Defined Application Services, SDAS, Traffix, Signaling Delivery Controller, iRules, and DevCentral are trademarks or service marks of F5 Networks, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

     

    This press release may contain forward-looking statements relating to future events or future financial performance that involve risks and uncertainties. Such statements can be identified by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential,” or “continue,” or the negative of such terms or comparable terms. These statements are only predictions, and actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these statements based upon a number of factors, including those identified in the company’s filings with the SEC.

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