Put Control and Security Where Your AI Applications Are
AI application development is accelerating at a blistering pace. According to a recent Gartner report, by 2026, more than 80% of enterprise applications will have embedded generative AI capabilities, up from less than 5% in 2023. As organizations race to infuse intelligence into their digital experiences, the focus is shifting from what AI can do to how AI can be reliably, securely, and efficiently delivered at scale. This new wave of intelligent applications brings with it new challenges around performance, placement, and control, especially across hybrid and multicloud environments.
Just like in real estate, the golden rule of deploying AI-powered apps is location, location, location. Where your AI infrastructure lives can significantly impact latency, cost, and user experience. Should it be close to your data stores for faster retrieval and model training? Near your users for low-latency inference and responsive apps? Or strategically placed to optimize for regulatory compliance, privacy, and availability? AI apps are inherently data and compute-heavy, so the gravitational pull of data and user interaction has never mattered more.
Finding that sweet spot between performance and control means balancing proximity to both data and users. And let’s not forget the importance of optimal interaction, ensuring that every AI prompt, whether from a chatbot, internal analytics tool, or external API call, is routed to the right backend, model, or service tier to provide accurate, timely responses. Getting this architecture right is essential to delivering AI experiences that feel seamless, smart, and secure.
This is where routing and security become mission critical. AI applications aren’t static; they’re dynamic systems with fluctuating usage patterns, diverse user intents, and ever-evolving data flows. That means you need a flexible, intelligent way to route prompts and inputs to the right compute resource, be it a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) hosted on-premises, a foundation model in the cloud, or a data service in another region. Without that control, you risk delays, degraded experiences, or even exposure to threat vectors.
Equally important is full observability across these AI transactions. It's not enough to know that a request was processed; you also need deep insight into what was asked, how it was routed, what model or system responded, and whether the result aligned with expectations. This level of visibility helps engineering teams debug faster, optimize application flow, and identify security gaps before they become incidents. It also ensures that AI applications don’t just work, but that they perform reliably, safely, and in line with business goals.
As AI applications become integral to modern enterprises, ensuring their secure and efficient deployment is paramount. F5 Distributed Cloud App Stack and F5 AI Gateway offer comprehensive solutions to address these challenges, providing organizations with the tools needed to deploy, manage, and secure AI workloads across diverse environments.
Deploy and manage AI applications anywhere
F5's Distributed Cloud App Stack is a SaaS-based offering that enables organizations to deploy, secure, and operate a fleet of applications across heterogeneous infrastructures, including private, public, telecommunications, and edge clouds. It provides a uniform application runtime and scheduling layer via a managed Kubernetes service, ensuring consistent workflows and reducing the complexity of managing distributed clusters. This flexibility allows enterprises to position their AI applications optimally, whether close to data sources for efficient processing or near end users for enhanced responsiveness.
Secure and optimize AI interactions
Complementing Distributed Cloud App Stack, F5 AI Gateway is designed to manage and secure prompts and responses to AI-powered applications. It inspects inbound prompts addressing concerns such as prompt injection and sensitive information disclosure. By providing customizable observation, protection, and management of AI interactions, the AI Gateway enhances the usability of AI applications and simplifies compliance.
Key features and benefits of AI Gateway include:
- Route management for AI app developers: F5 AI Gateway has built in management of traffic routing to LLMs and small language models (SLMs). It manages the keys, API specs, and endpoints for developers and enables fast building and iteration of AI applications without any additional risks.
- Content-based routing: AI Gateway enables context-based routing of AI prompts to internal and external LLMs or SLMs. This ensures that prompts are directed to the most appropriate model, optimizing responses and reducing the developer iteration process.
- Flexible deployment: Both Distributed Cloud App Stack and AI Gateway support deployment across various environments, including public and private clouds, on-premises data centers, and edge locations. Their Kubernetes-based architecture allows for optimized placement of AI applications, enhancing performance and the user experience.
- Comprehensive observability: With OpenTelemetry support, AI Gateway offers complete visibility into all transactions to and from LLMs. This observability aids in monitoring performance, detecting anomalies, and facilitating compliance through detailed audit logs.
- Enhanced security: AI Gateway identifies and blocks security threats such as prompt injections and sensitive information disclosures. It also ensures secure communication between components using mutual TLS (mTLS) and provides authentication, authorization, credential management, and role-based access control (RBAC) to maintain security and compliance.
The flexibility and security needed to harness AI
By integrating F5's Distributed Cloud App Stack and F5 AI Gateway into their infrastructure, organizations can effectively deploy, manage, and secure AI applications. These solutions provide the necessary flexibility, observability, and security to harness the full potential of AI, delivering optimized and secure experiences to users across various environments.
To find out more, visit our F5 Distributed Cloud App Stack and F5 AI Gateway web pages. Also, watch our F5 AI Gateway video showing security use cases.