Secure, High-Performance Content Delivery from Edge to Cloud
Built on a high-performance, secure global private network, F5 Distributed Cloud CDN enables rich digital experiences for end users. The F5 CDN supports modern content types, is built with an API-first architecture, and integrates with critical app security services to empower your organization as it pursues multi-cloud and edge-based app initiatives.
As App Delivery Moves Closer to the Edge, CDNs Must Evolve
Content delivery networks (CDNs) have long held a place in the application delivery and performance ecosystem. Traditionally, their job is simple: cache static and dynamic content and serve it from a global network of points of presence (PoPs) close to the user.
But organizations and their end customers want more. The next generation of application delivery moves workloads closer to where transactions actually happen, cutting the latency users feel. Applications and architectures are evolving, and so is the way teams think about building and delivering them.
That shift pushes apps out to the “edge” through microservices and containers. These apps increasingly rely on distributed architectures to keep up with growing usage and rising performance demands.
As users’ availability and performance expectations change, organizations are choosing to run lightweight applications across clouds and on-premises at branch and satellite locations to complement CDN functionality and speed up data access and processing of critical telemetry at the edge—as opposed to long hauling back to an originating cloud or data center. This has created a distributed computing problem for many organizations as they grapple with the prospects of expanding some workloads further out to the edge or struggle with managing apps and workloads in an already complex, distributed set of environments.
To improve performance on their own, teams often stitch together a patchwork of open source tools and commercial offerings from public cloud and CDN providers. That patchwork leaves them carrying real weight:
- The complexity of deploying and operating apps across multiple public, private, telco, and CDN environments.
- The difficulty of keeping a mismatched stack of app services and consistent policies aligned across apps and environments, including CDNs, cloud providers, and on-premises solutions.
- Code changes or rewrites to support edge deployments on serverless applications and nascent edge platforms, which leads to potential vendor lock-in.
- A lack of unified visibility across an ever-expanding ecosystem of on-premises, data centers, CDNs, and edge locations. Serverless architectures often lack the flexibility to deploy workloads outside the provider’s footprint (its CDN, edge, or network PoPs), tying nearly all compute and deployment to one provider’s infrastructure.
When organizations deliver apps globally, three things stay top of mind: availability, security, and performance. A CDN plays a major role in all three, but modern app delivery calls for a more evolved set of capabilities than caching alone. That is what F5® Distributed Cloud CDN and its platform services deliver.
Update Your Network for Modern App Delivery across Environments
Modern app delivery is about more than just serving up content. It is about security, multi-cloud and edge connectivity, APIs, and the ability to deploy microservice-based apps anywhere. It is also about availability and performance.
Built on the tools and technologies in the F5® Distributed Cloud Platform, F5 Distributed Cloud CDN delivers an integrated set of capabilities that address your application availability, security, and performance needs in one place.
The F5 Global Network gives you a high-capacity, high-performance backbone for delivering applications worldwide. With F5 Distributed Cloud CDN, you can:
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Connect environments, apps, and workloads. A unified service mesh across multi- and hybrid-cloud environments includes a centrally managed distributed proxy, service discovery, networking, and security services for both modern and legacy applications.
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Secure apps and workloads with multi-layered web app and API protection. Enforce security policies and defend against automation, unwanted traffic, malware, and other threats anywhere, using a unified set of app security controls: web application firewall (WAF), DDoS mitigation, API security, and bot defense.
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Run critical microservices and Kubernetes-based workloads wherever required. Use a complete range of services to automate app and infrastructure deployment, scaling, and lifecycle management with centralized orchestration.
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Optimize static and dynamic content delivery for web apps and workloads. Content delivery is paired with primary and secondary authoritative DNS services and intelligent load balancing over F5’s global anycast network, including built-in DDoS protection.
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Monitor all distributed apps, services, and infrastructure. Get end-to-end visibility and reporting on security services, network, app performance, and system health.
The F5 Distributed Cloud Platform consolidates CDN and other services to support apps across both monolithic and microservices-based architectures, simplifying management while upgrading security and network connectivity. The result: you can meet your modern app needs no matter where you are in your digital transformation journey.
Conclusion
F5 Distributed Cloud CDN is part of the broader Distributed Cloud Platform that offers SaaS-delivered app services and critical capabilities to support modern, multi-cloud, and edge-delivered apps. This platform enables your organization to accelerate app delivery, optimize performance, and reduce operational complexity across operations, engineering, architecture, and network teams.
The F5 CDN can be purchased with the Distributed Cloud Platform, with Distributed Cloud WAAP, or as a standalone service, and offers options for integrating with companies’ existing infrastructure. Customers can try CDN for free before deciding whether to purchase.