Lori MacVittie

The F5 Cloud Licensing Program

Whether the goal is scalability, security, better performance, availability, consolidation, or reducing costs, F5 enterprise customers have achieved these goals using F5 solutions. The next step is ensuring these same goals can be achieved in a public cloud, whether the implementation is pure public or hybrid cloud.

To do that requires enabling cloud service providers with the ability to offer a complete application delivery network (ADN) in the cloud, with a cost structure appropriate to a utility service model. Given that 43% of respondents in a Cloud Computing Outlook 2011 survey indicated “lack of training” was inhibiting their cloud adoption, being able to offer such services that customers are familiar with is important.

That’s the impetus behind the creation of the F5 Cloud Licensing Program, a new service-provider focused licensing model for the industry’s only complete cloud-enabled ADN. With services encompassing the entire application delivery chain – from security to acceleration to access control – this offering brings to the table the ability to maintain operational consistency from the data center into the cloud, without compromising on the infrastructure services needed by enterprises to take advantage of public cloud models.

Cloud Application Delivery Services	Cloud Security Services	Cloud Gateway Services
•Load Balancing •Cloud Balancing •DNS Services •Acceleration	•Centralized SSL •Web Application Firewall •Data Center Firewall	•WAN Optimization •Access Control •IPv6 •SPDY

Not sure it can be that easy? Head on over to BlueLock and take advantage of their free, 30 day trial of their Virtual Datacenter offering, powered by F5 or take a gander at our “F5 DevCentral to the Cloud” presentation which offers some insight into the offering.

Bluelock and F5 together deliver:

• The complete suite of F5 solutions as a service in the cloud
• A unified architecture that enables customers to move between public and private infrastructures as needed
• A utility billing model that allows customers to pay only for what they use, eliminating the investment risks associated with long-term commitments

The F5 Cloud Licensing Program is a win-win for both service providers and enterprises. It’s a win for service providers, who finally have a complete cloud-enabled ADN offering as a means to differentiate on services. It’s a win for enterprise customers, who finally have infrastructure as a service offerings that can be leveraged without sacrificing on critical application delivery services and without requiring them to learn new management and service interfaces to do it.

Additional Resources:

• F5 ADN Solution
• Bluelock Case Study
• ADN Platform Management
• F5 Cloud Licensing Program
• F5 DevCentral to the Cloud