The F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform

An application delivery and security platform is a single, converged platform that brings together the critical services needed to ensure every app and API—from the edge to the cloud—has consistent, comprehensive security, high availability, and intelligent orchestration for intensive workloads. F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) converges traffic management with advanced security for apps and APIs, providing unified observability, automation with programmability, and portfolio-wide visibility and AI assistance to keep policies consistent wherever apps run.

An application delivery and security platform (ADSP) is broader than a traditional ADC because it’s designed as a single, converged platform that unifies global application delivery, comprehensive application and API security, unified observability, and automation with programmability—all to be managed with a centralized SaaS console that standardizes telemetry and policy across hybrid multicloud and edge environments. In contrast, an ADC is typically centered on application delivery functions, whereas F5 ADSP explicitly combines delivery and advanced security (including WAAP and full API lifecycle protection), portfolio-wide visibility, AI-assisted insights, and API-first/policy-as-code automation so teams can “standardize once and scale everywhere” without manually stitching together point tools.

A load balancer primarily distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers or endpoints to improve availability and scale. An Application Delivery Controller (ADC) typically includes load balancing but adds more application-aware capabilities such as advanced traffic management and broader delivery features (often including functions like content switching and policy-based routing). For F5, you can see delivery capabilities discussed beyond basic load balancing—such as global traffic load balancing, resilient DNS, multicloud networking, and acceleration patterns (including CDN)—which are examples of the broader “application delivery” scope typically associated with ADC-class capabilities.

A converged platform reduces operational complexity by replacing disconnected point products and consoles with unified delivery and security services, centralized visibility, and consistent policy enforcement across hybrid multicloud environments. The complexity is further exacerbated by the evolution of AI, IT teams need a single platform that treats app delivery and security holistically. A converged app delivery and security platform provides increased app and API visibility while automating resource-constraining operational tasks. F5 ADSP is being designed to standardize once and scale everywhere through a centralized SaaS console for a single operational view, a unified control plane to keep enforcement and insights consistent, policy-as-code and API-first interfaces to support GitOps and CI/CD integration, and lifecycle automation that reduces manual steps that cause policy drift.

A unified delivery and security platform improves application performance by combining delivery capabilities with telemetry and data-driven insights so performance and resiliency can be continuously enhanced. F5 ADSP brings global traffic load balancing, resilient DNS, multicloud networking, and acceleration patterns (including CDN) into one framework, and guides delivery decisions using signals such as latency, saturation, and health, enhanced by anomaly detection for proactive rerouting and autoscaling to help maintain consistent user experiences. F5 Insight is a holistic solution that unifies every aspect of operating applications in BIG-IP.It provides end-to-end visibility and operational narratives. It allows you to prioritize to-dos with health scores, anomaly detection, and report cards. It delivers clarity and value faster with views built by F5 experts. It provides expert guidance and optimization recommendations using natural language interactions.

F5 ADSP is engineered for the AI era and supports AI-focused delivery and security capabilities that help maintain throughput and control sensitive information. The platform’s AI app delivery framework enables teams to optimize object throughput for training pipelines without starving other services, steer inference calls based on model availability (as well as cost and accuracy SLAs), and establish guardrails such as quotas or isolation so bursty AI jobs don’t trample business-critical apps; for AI applications, F5 ADSP supports guardrails around prompts and responses, data redaction or sanitization, AI red teaming, and model-aware routing patterns.

GPU starvation is when GPUs sit underutilized because they aren’t being fed data or requests efficiently (for example, due to storage, networking, or scheduling bottlenecks), which reduces throughput and increases cost. F5 ADSP’s AI app delivery framework is intended to optimize object throughput for training pipelines, steer inference calls based on model availability (and cost/accuracy SLAs), and establish guardrails (such as quotas or isolation) so bursty AI jobs don’t trample business-critical apps—helping maintain high GPU utilization while still honoring latency SLOs.