Major release drives developer productivity with new self-service, app-centric, and configuration API capabilities

By ; Saber Mohamed

F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) has introduced NGINX Controller 3.0, a cloud-native application delivery solution to help organizations increase business agility, mitigate risk, and enhance their customers’ digital experiences. Built to unleash productivity and efficiency, the 3.x series offers the first multi-cloud, self-service platform that removes the friction between DevOps, NetOps, SecOps, and app developers.

NGINX Controller^™ combines a broad set of app services, including load balancing, API management, analytics, and service mesh with an application-centric approach. As a result, it reduces the tool sprawl that thwarts organizations’ efforts to speed their application deployments. Further, it provides significant performance and insights along with a lower total cost of ownership.

“This is our first major product introduction since we joined forces with F5 in May, and it highlights the unique value proposition of NGINX and F5 together,” said Gus Robertson, SVP and GM of NGINX at F5. “Controller 3.0 provides the foundation for developer and DevOps self-service, at scale. We’ve designed the user experience to be centered on the asset that businesses care about most: their apps. This is a big departure from previous infrastructure-centric solutions. Plus, customers’ apps can now be configured by a new API. We’re excited to hit this major milestone. Stay tuned as we continue adding value in each monthly release.”

• Improve Digital Experiences by Streamlining the Delivery of Code to Customers

As a cloud-agnostic solution, NGINX Controller empowers customers to easily deliver and automate a more comprehensive, consistent set of app services across multi-cloud deployments. DevOps teams will appreciate NGINX Controller’s integrations with key CI/CD tool vendors like Ansible and Datadog. The developer portal provides a view into documentation for APIs published through Controller, while the built-in certificate manager stores SSL/TLS certificates securely for easy association with applications. And, it mitigates the significant capital and operational costs of tool sprawl that so many enterprises are challenged by today. Not only can Controller support organizations as they move into new clouds or adopt new technologies by simplifying and accelerating modern app deployments, it also helps drive business growth.

• Empower Teams with Self-Service Capabilities without Ceding Infrastructure Control

Traditional application delivery and API management solutions are often more tuned to the underlying infrastructure than the applications themselves, leading to difficulty in managing app performance and maintaining app visibility. With NGINX Controller 3.0, customers can achieve productivity and efficiency gains for modern app-focused teams while assuring appropriate governance. DevOps, NetOps, SecOps, and AppDev personnel enjoy self-service management and monitoring for their own apps based on role, as well as orchestrated workflows that promote seamless collaboration across functional teams. As they look to understand application health and performance in an easy-to-consume manner, they’ll find an intuitive dashboard populated with real-time, app-centric data.

• Monitor and Manage App Performance with Intelligent Application Insights

NGINX Controller provides valuable analytics and insights to help applications adapt, protect, heal, and drive business results, including thresholds tied to uptime and performance. This gives teams the intelligence to not only improve app performance based on current conditions, but also to incorporate learnings and trend analysis into ongoing development cycles. The result is a significant reduction in the time it takes to update an application for expanded use cases, or to add security features based on new threats. Users can obtain historical metrics and view events using an API—another design decision made to optimize the DevOps experience. In addition, flexible storage options are available to ensure that analytics data is always accessible when and where needed, even when disruptions occur. These capabilities provide increased visibility across associated performance metrics so customers can deliver traditional and modern applications at scale.

Supporting Quotes

“Automation within the CI/CD pipeline continues to be a significant means for organizations to more efficiently deliver differentiated apps, services, and digital experiences,” said Tom Anderson, Senior Director, Ansible Automation, Red Hat. “NGINX Controller helps enable our shared customers to automate throughout the application lifecycle, spurring collaboration between disparate teams and speeding new offerings to market.”

“NGINX has proved to be the most widely adopted software package in our annual Container and Orchestration reports, and is indispensable for running distributed services,” said Michael Gerstenhaber, Director of Product at Datadog. “We're excited to see F5 investing in new tools, and to partner with them in providing observability for product teams that deliver reliable, performant solutions to their customers.”

“As companies increasingly rely on modern application architectures to deliver digital experiences to their customers, they need the ability to deploy and manage services across multiple environments and locations,” said Clint Huffaker, Technical Solutions Architect at World Wide Technology. “We work closely with F5 as a global technology solutions provider and systems integrator, and NGINX Controller gives our joint customers a compelling breadth of offerings to deploy quickly in support of a forward-looking blend of hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. We are excited to showcase NGINX and other F5 solutions in WWT’s Advanced Technology Center where customers can see live demonstrations and get hands-on access to the latest IT solutions.”

Availability

NGINX Controller 3.0 is generally available now, with additional features released throughout the year, including service mesh (anticipated availability in summer 2020). For more product information and to request a free trial, visit: https://www.nginx.com/products/nginx-controller/

Additional Resources

• Accelerating Application Delivery from Code to Customer with NGINX – Blog Post
• Introducing NGINX Controller 3.0: Accelerate Time-to-Market with App-Centric Delivery – Blog Post

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