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 F5โs NGINX Plus offering with the cutting-edge optimisation 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 organisations increasingly adopt AI to power intelligent applications and workflows, efficient and secure AI inference becomes critical. This need is addressed by combining the OpenVINO toolkitโwhich optimises and accelerates AI model inferenceโwith F5 NGINX Plus, providing robust traffic management and security.
The OpenVINO toolkit simplifies the optimisation 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 โข 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.
โTeaming 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 organisations can harness the power of AI with superior performance and security,โ said Kunal Anand, Chief Technology Officer at F5.
โLeveraging the cutting-edge infrastructure acceleration of Intel IPUs and the OpenVINO toolkit alongside F5 NGINX Plus can help enable enterprises to realise innovative AI inference solutions with improved simplicity, security, and performance at scale for multiple vertical markets and workloads,โ said Pere Monclus, Chief Technology Officer, Network and Edge Group of Intel.
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 worldโs largest, most advanced organisations to secure every appโon 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.
