Five Key Takeaways from F5 Accelerate AI

As AI reshapes how applications are built, deployed, and secured, F5 is at the forefront helping organizations prepare for an AI-powered world. 

This week, in what we’ve called “Accelerate AI,” F5 provided an in-depth look into what it means to be ready as organizations travel the path to an AI-supported future. Each day over the past week, we focused on a different theme—discussing the hurdles companies face securing, connecting, and scaling their AI applications. And we showcased some of the industry-leaving innovations we’re incorporating into the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) as we help customers thrive in the AI era. 

As Accelerate AI comes to a close, here are five takeaways:

1. AI readiness starts with having the right foundation in place. 

Newly released F5 research shows that organizations aren’t as ready for AI as they think. Only 2% of organizations fell into the “highly ready” zone of F5’s AI Readiness Index, while 21% showed a low level of readiness. The vast majority of companies (77%) are stuck somewhere in the middle. Most have implemented at least one generative AI project and are exploring agentic AI. But as F5 Distinguished Engineer Lori MacVittie put it in her blog post about F5’s research findings, enterprises have “started laying tracks, but the engine isn’t running at speed yet.”

To help customers better prepare, this week we announced our updated F5 AI Reference Architecture for developing the secure and operationally resilient AI applications they need to succeed. This comprehensive architecture—which provides guidance for security, traffic management, and platform optimization—offers a clear, actionable framework for deploying AI applications at scale.

2. AI-powered technology is a must for simplicity and speed.

To compete in the AI era, enterprises must boost efficiency, streamline their processes, and improve the speed and accuracy of their decisions—and F5 has been helping with these efforts by incorporating AI functionality into our F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform. F5 developed the F5 AI Data Fabric, a scalable infrastructure designed to accelerate the pace of AI adoption across our portfolio. One outcome of the F5 AI Data Fabric is the AI Assistant, which we have incorporated into our three major product families within F5 ADSP. This week, we announced we are bringing these AI assistants into a single F5 AI Assistant across the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform, helping enterprises exploit the wealth of information at their disposal, while reducing the complexities of their hybrid multicloud environments.

We also announced that the AI Assistant now generates iRules code, helping our F5 BIG-IP users automatically create and optimize iRules scripts that they previously developed manually. With 85% of our BIG-IP customers using iRules to customize their application delivery and security environments, this is a big time saver. Not only will iRules code generation eliminate manual processes, but it will empower teams to improve efficiency, scalability, and innovation. 

3. Survival means staying ahead of the growing security risks. 

AI systems need vast amounts of high-quality data to reason, learn, and make informed decisions—yet protecting all of that data is becoming increasingly complex. Sensitive data now moves dynamically across encrypted channels, between AI models, APIs, and apps, creating blind spots that legacy tools simply cannot see, let alone control. At the same time, compliance and regulations demand continuous oversight, with real-time auditing and fine-grained controls over data access and movement. 

This week, we announced new functionality coming to F5 ADSP to help customers meet these challenges. We are adding data leakage detection and prevention to F5 AI Gateway, our solution for managing, securing, and routing traffic between clients and large language models. With this capability, AI Gateway can now inspect sensitive content—including personally identifiable information, financial data, and health records—at the time of inferencing. Organizations can choose to log, redact, or block content based on their policies before it reaches the model or leaves the environment. 

We also discussed how Shadow AI—the rampant use of AI tools by employees without the approval of IT—is quietly becoming one of the most dangerous security risks in the enterprise. And we noted that in the coming months we will launch powerful new capabilities to help organizations comprehensively mitigate this risk—particularly around unauthorized use of AI tools over encrypted channels (the default for most AI APIs and SaaS platforms).

Finally, we explained how F5 Distributed Cloud Bot Defense can help protect against potential threats introduced by the rise of AI-based mechanisms such as agentic AI. These are just a few examples of how we’re rapidly innovating to reduce security risks at a time when AI-driven threats are expanding the attack surface.   

4. True agility requires orchestrating and scaling AI workloads with ease.

Another challenge for organizations is orchestrating and scaling their AI workflows. As organizations incorporate AI into their operations, they need a coordinated way to manage their AI systems. They must also ensure their systems can handle the growing volume of workflows at scale without diminishing performance.

As we work with customers to address these issues, we laid out our vision for unified AI connectivity, explaining why a comprehensive approach is needed to streamline operations, enhance security, and obtain the agility enterprises need as they distribute their AI workloads across a highly complex hybrid multicloud environment.  

This week, we also announced an expanded strategic partnership with MinIO, the leader in high-performance, S3-compatible object storage, to improve how organizations manage, transport, and secure their AI and data-intensive applications at scale. Our partnership with MinIO is the latest in a growing number of collaborations aimed at delivering integrated, cutting-edge solutions that drive success in an AI-powered world.

5. A comprehensive, platform approach will get you there.  

To achieve the security, scale, and agility they need to compete in today’s dynamic, AI-driven landscape, organizations must have the right foundation in place. 

Navigating a maze of disconnected tools, policies, and consoles is no longer a viable option. In today’s increasingly distributed and complex AI-driven landscape, customers need a unified approach to simplifying their operations—and F5 meets this need with the industry’s premier application delivery and security platform.

This week’s announcements shine a spotlight on some of our leading-edge innovations as F5 accelerates customer success in an AI-powered world. But it’s important to note that it’s just the beginning.

Stay tuned for much more as we continue to evolve our F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, I hope you’ll check out all of this week’s news in greater detail on our Accelerate AI webpage.