F5 Collaborates with Intel to Simplify the Security and Delivery of AI Services

Enhancing the protection and performance of enterprise AI inference solutions with F5 NGINX Plus, Intel OpenVINO, and Intel IPUs

INDIA, AUGUST 28, 2024 – F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced it is bringing robust application security and delivery capabilities to AI deployments powered by Intel. This new joint solution combines industry-leading security and traffic management from F5’s NGINX Plus offering with the cutting-edge optimization and performance of the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) to deliver superior protection, scalability, and performance for advanced AI inference.

As organizations increasingly adopt AI to power intelligent applications and workflows, efficient and secure AI inference becomes critical. This need is addressed by combining the OpenVINO toolkit—which optimizes and accelerates AI model inference—with F5 NGINX Plus, providing robust traffic management and security.

The OpenVINO toolkit simplifies the optimization of models from almost any framework to enable a write-once, deploy-anywhere approach. This toolkit is essential for developers aiming to create scalable and efficient AI solutions with minimal code changes.

F5 NGINX Plus enhances the security and reliability of these AI models. Acting as a reverse proxy, NGINX Plus manages traffic, ensures high availability, and provides active health checks. It also facilitates SSL termination and mTLS encryption, safeguarding communications between applications and AI models without compromising performance.

To further boost performance, Intel IPUs offload infrastructure services from the host CPU, freeing up resources for AI model servers. The IPUs efficiently manage infrastructure tasks, opening up resources to enhance the scalability and performance of both NGINX Plus and OpenVINO ™ Model Servers (OVMS).

This integrated solution is particularly beneficial for edge applications, such as video analytics and IoT, where low latency and high performance are crucial. By running NGINX Plus on the Intel IPU, the solution helps ensure rapid and reliable responses, making it ideal for content delivery networks and distributed microservices deployments.

“Teaming up with Intel empowers us to push the boundaries of AI deployment. This collaboration highlights our commitment to driving innovation and delivers a secure, reliable, and scalable AI inference solution that will enable enterprises to securely deliver AI services at speed. Our combined solution ensures that organizations can harness the power of AI with superior performance and security,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Technology Officer at F5.

“Leveraging the cutting-edge infrastructure acceleration of Intel IPUs and the OpenVINO toolkit alongside F5 NGINX Plus can help enable enterprises to realize innovative AI inference solutions with improved simplicity, security, and performance at scale for multiple vertical markets and workloads,” said Pere Monclus, Chief Technology Officer, Network and Edge Group of Intel.

“When it comes to AI, we are witnessing an exciting time in India, as more and more businesses are adopting AI to automate their processes, gain faster insights, enhance product development, and achieve competitive advantage,” said Pratik Shah, Managing Director for India & SAARC, F5. “This partnership underscores our dedication to providing enterprises with advanced solutions that not only enhance performance, but also ensures robust security. By integrating Intel's toolkit and processing units with F5’s NGINX Plus, we are offering a comprehensive, scalable, and secure AI inference solution.”

The solution is now available. For more information, visit f5.com/intel. In addition, a companion blog from F5 CTO Kunal Anand provides further insights on this offering.

About F5

F5 is a multicloud application security and delivery company committed to bringing a better digital world to life. F5 partners with the world’s largest, most advanced organizations to secure every app—on premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. F5 enables businesses to continuously stay ahead of threats while delivering exceptional, secure digital experiences for their customers. For more information, go to f5.com. (NASDAQ: FFIV)

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F5, NGINX, and NGINX Plus are trademarks, service marks, or tradenames of F5, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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