F5 Lin Geng: "Code to User" Application Service Architecture Empowers Enterprise Digital Transformation

Recently, F5, the world's leading multi-cloud application service provider, successfully held an online summit with the theme of "Code to User" to commemorate its 20th anniversary in China, attracting more than 8,000 participants. During the summit, Mr. Geng Lin, F5's global chief scientist and chief technology officer, gave an in-depth interpretation of F5's "Code to User" strategy and application service architecture in the form of remote video lectures.

Lin Geng emphasized that the concept of code to user is due to F5's in-depth insights into hundreds of thousands of customers and their industries over the years, as well as its grasp of technology development trends. F5's unique advantage lies in providing customers with the ability to cover the entire application delivery chain, and providing digital insights with the help of data telemetry and AI technology, thereby optimizing customers' application delivery experience and expanding business value.

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The origin of code to user, starting from the digital transformation of enterprises

At present, almost all industries are in the process of digital transformation. Lin Geng believes that the proposal of the "code to user" application service architecture is due to the process of enterprise digital transformation. According to different degrees, digital transformation can be divided into three stages:

The first stage is automation, where companies use applications to replace some of the tasks performed manually, thereby achieving automation. The second stage is the stage of digital expansion. Companies implement digital transformation of their business processes, improve operational efficiency and launch new business models. For example, online car-hailing platforms transform the process of taking a taxi into an end-to-end digital business chain. Digital expansion not only occurs in digital native companies, but also applies to traditional companies.

In the third stage, enterprises use AI technology to assist business development. At this point, enterprises begin to use business telemetry technology, data analysis, machine learning ML and artificial intelligence AI technology to find business opportunities that they could not find before. Digital technology is deeply integrated with core business, thereby creating new value. In actual business, e-commerce platforms use AI technology to identify the user's position in the shopping chain, which can effectively improve sales conversion. Financial institutions introduce AI technology to identify user risks in seconds, and then open up innovative formats of financial technology, which are all successful practices of digital transformation.

According to the 2020 Application Services Status Report released by F5, approximately 46% of enterprises worldwide have begun to improve efficiency through automation, 37% of enterprises have reached the stage of digital expansion, and another 17% have entered the third stage. Overall, more than 80% of enterprises have embarked on the journey of digital transformation.

The core of code to user: opening up the end-to-end unified management application delivery chain

The key to digital transformation is that enterprises can achieve data-driven by deploying a large number of applications. According to F5's survey, 69% of enterprises worldwide use 10 or more application services. Lin Geng believes that these application services come from different manufacturers, making it difficult to manage them in a unified manner. This may also increase the difficulty of application management and operation, resulting in inconsistent security policies, poor user experience and many other problems. "This makes us realize that customers need a unified platform to gain insight into and automate application services."

F5 proposes the concept of "code to user", which starts from the customer's code and runs through the entire link to achieve a distributed architecture for application delivery, full-process application security, and a visualized and manageable model. F5 provides powerful support throughout the entire life cycle, allowing customers to uniformly manage applications on their links to ensure high performance and a secure digital experience for applications.

Lin Geng emphasized that F5's unique position determines its natural advantages. First, F5's Big-IP products, together with NGINX software, support more than 400 million application deployments worldwide, and have the ability to deliver applications in multi-cloud environments or any infrastructure. Secondly, F5's location makes the collection of telemetry data easier, and it can be achieved without changing the code and architecture. In addition, combined with the proven AI analysis engine obtained from the acquisition of Shape, insights into target applications and business transactions can be discovered.

　　Code-to-user practice: telemetry data and AI-driven application insights and automation

The best way to achieve end-to-end application insights and automation is to gain insights through massive telemetry data collection and AI technology. In this regard, F5 provides a rich product portfolio and solutions to achieve application insights and automation. Lin Geng introduced that F5 released the Beacon product in November 2019, providing end-to-end application health and performance visualization tools in any environment. In early 2020, F5 released the NGINX Controller 3.0 version, which supports developers to implement automated application service deployment, launch R&D autonomous services and execute AIOps within the policy framework provided by operations and maintenance.

In addition, with the successful acquisition of Shape Security, F5 has raised the standard by one level and is moving towards a multi-functional application analysis platform. Such a platform can not only support application insights, automation and AIOps, but also support AI-based security and anti-fraud protection, end-to-end digital experience management, and the creation of AI-based services. Previously, F5 also launched Shape Recognize, allowing customers to use AI and business analysis to directly increase revenue.

Lin Geng shared F5's successful practices. A large US aviation company uses Shape Recognize's AI-enhanced service tools to identify users' locations and security risks in the purchase path. Shape Recognize can integrate hundreds of telemetry data in the background and make dynamic adjustments based on AI data models, which has increased revenue for the company. Shape Security is powerful in AI anti-fraud recognition, and a large US bank has successfully blocked 85% of automated malicious attacks.

Finally, F5 provides comprehensive application services from code to users, covering every key point in the chain from web servers, ingress controllers, API gateways, load balancing, and WAF firewalls. At the same time, NGINX open source software provides support for hundreds of millions of websites around the world. Lin Geng concluded that the distributed application service architecture from code to user, as well as the integration of end-to-end telemetry and cloud-based analysis architecture, will provide support for the digital transformation of all industries. F5 will also continue to take root in the Chinese market and work with customers and partners to realize the vision of digitalization.