F5 Releases Next-Generation NGINX Controller 3.0 to Accelerate Modern Application Delivery

Recently, F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) launched NGINX Controller 3.0, a cloud-native application delivery solution that helps enterprises improve business agility, reduce risks, and enhance customers' digital experience. The 3.x series is designed to unleash enterprise productivity and efficiency, and to this end provides the first multi-cloud self-service platform that eliminates friction between DevOps, NetOps, SecOps, and application developers.

NGINX Controller™ combines a broad set of application services, including load balancing, API management, analytics, and an application-centric service mesh, to reduce the tool sprawl that has hindered enterprises from accelerating application deployments. In addition, the controller provides outstanding performance and insights, and reduces total cost of ownership.

Gus Robertson, senior vice president and general manager of NGINX, said, "This is the first major product release since the merger of NGINX and F5 in May, and it reflects the unique values ​​of NGINX and F5. Controller 3.0 lays the foundation for large-scale development and DevOps self-service. We will put the application, the asset that enterprises care about most, at the core of user experience design. This is very different from the previous infrastructure-centric solution. In addition, customer applications can now be configured through a new API. We are very excited to achieve this important milestone. In the future, we will continue to release higher value initiatives every month."

Simplify delivery from customer to code and improve digital experience

As a cloud-agnostic solution, NGINX Controller enables customers to easily deliver and automate more comprehensive and consistent application services across multi-cloud deployments. DevOps teams will support the integration of NGINX Controller with key CI/CD tool vendors such as Ansible and Datadog. The developer portal provides a view of API documentation published through the controller, and the built-in certificate manager securely stores SSL/TLS certificates to easily associate them with applications. It alleviates the huge capital and operating cost growth brought about by the increase in tools, which is a major challenge facing many companies today. Controller can not only support organizations in migrating to new clouds or adopting new technologies by simplifying and accelerating the deployment of modern applications, but also help them drive business growth.

Empower teams to self-service while maintaining infrastructure control

Traditional application delivery and API management solutions are often better suited to the infrastructure rather than the applications themselves, which has led to challenges for enterprises in managing application performance and maintaining application visibility. With NGINX Controller 3.0, customers can improve productivity and efficiency for teams focused on modern applications while providing proper management. DevOps, NetOps, SecOps, and AppDev personnel can enjoy self-service management and monitoring of applications based on their roles, and can also promote seamless collaboration across functional teams through refined workflows. Real-time status data of the application is displayed on the intuitive dashboard, allowing staff to understand the health and performance of the application in a more user-friendly way.

Intelligent Application Insights Monitor and manage application performance

The NGINX Controller provides valuable analytics and insights for application adaptation, protection, repair, and driving business success, including thresholds related to uptime and performance. This allows teams to not only improve application performance based on current conditions, but also incorporate learning and trend analysis into ongoing development cycles, greatly reducing the time required to update applications for expanded use cases or add security features to respond to new threats. Users can also use APIs to obtain historical metrics and view events, which is another design solution for optimizing the DevOps experience. In addition, flexible storage options ensure that customers can access analytical data when and where they need it, even in the event of an outage. These features increase visibility into relevant performance metrics so customers can deliver traditional and modern applications at scale.

“Automation within CI/CD pipelines continues to be an important way for enterprises to more effectively deliver differentiated applications, services, and digital experiences,” said Tom Anderson, senior director of Ansible Automation at Red Hat Software. “NGINX Controller helps our mutual customers automate the entire application lifecycle, facilitate collaboration across teams, and accelerate time to market for new products.”

“NGINX is the most widely adopted software package according to our annual Containers and Orchestration Report and is essential for running distributed services,” said Michael Gerstenhaber, Director of Product at Datadog. “We are excited to see F5 investing in new tools and to work with them to provide observability to product teams that deliver reliable and 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. “As a global technology solutions provider and systems integrator, we work closely with F5, and NGINX Controller provides our joint customers with a compelling offering that can be rapidly deployed to support the forward-looking convergence of hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. We are showcasing solutions from NGINX and F5 at WWT’s Advanced Technology Center, where customers can view live demonstrations and experience the latest IT solutions first-hand.”

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