F5 Networks, NGINX Launch First Combined App Delivery Controller

The NGINX Controller 3.0, the first integrated product from the newly-combined F5 and NGINX, will help to break down "operational silos" between DevOps and NetOps teams, NGINX said.

F5 Networks and NGINX unveiled its first major product since joining forces last spring.

The NGINX Controller 3.0 takes an application-centric -- as opposed to infrastructure-centric -- approach and combines intelligent load balancing, API management, analytics, service mesh, among other capabilities, according to NGINX.

Version three of the application delivery controller will help to break down operational silos and put everyone on the same page, including application developers, NetOps, SecOps, and DevOps teams, said Florence Dulla, director of product marketing for NGINX.

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"The environments that get created are one where there's silos along the data path for a single application, as well as the silos around application architecture and infrastructure environments," Dulla said. "There's a lot of different operators that use all these different tool sets and they are generally limited in terms of orchestration across these data path elements."

IT often must stitch tools together to make sense of data coming in, she said. "Our mission is to break down these silos," Dulla said.

Application delivery specialist F5 Networks has been focused on offering solutions for every stage of application development and application lifecycle. That path ultimately led the company to acquiring NGINX, a company focused on application delivery software, for $670 million in 2019.

The latest controller, the first release of an integrated solution between the two companies, is a multi-cloud, self-service platform doesn't limit movement of applications for IT teams, especially as businesses adopt cloud services and are actively avoiding infrastructure lock-in, Dulla said.

"We are delivering the most comprehensive set of multi-cloud and platform-independent capabilities of any solution provider," she said. "It's the first in a series of releases that empowers enterprises to deploy apps and services in any type of environment."

Customers or solution providers managing their customers' environments can use the controller to immediately see the health of an application, troubleshoot components of the application, and define and implement new policies centered around the application, not the underlying infrastructure, Dulla said.

Version 3.0 of the NGINX Controller is generally available now through F5 channel partners and the company said that it will be releasing additional features throughout 2020.

Seattle-based F5 generates about 98 percent of its revenue through the channel today.