Written
An application delivery controller (ADC) refresh is a great occasion to look to the future and optimise your network for not only the applications you have in place today, but what you will have tomorrow. Odds are the box you’re replacing is out of date and more than five years old. A lot’s happened in the networking and application delivery spaces since you last purchased an ADC, meaning a refresh is the perfect opening to add new functionality to your network to help your business transition to the future. Here, we look at four key opportunities an ADC refresh presents.
1. Choice
You don’t have a crystal ball. You can’t see what your network will look like or how your application ecosystem will evolve over the next two, three, four years and beyond. You want choice. You need a platform that can grow with your business and offers you choice for every possible need while ensuring you still have the agility you demand today. When examining ADC providers and preparing for a refresh, look not only at their existing products, but their roadmap and their history of innovation. Does that align to your business needs and goals? Will it fuel your desired business outcomes? Or will you be caught standing still and paying top-dollar for boxes that no longer meet your needs?
2. Security
The threat landscape has evolved dramatically since your last ADC deployment, and that will continue. Think about the threats of the last five years – there have been monumental breaches, hacks of government agencies, you name it. That means your network has to be an impenetrable fortress, free from threat actors looking to steal data or take you down. When considering an ADC refresh, it’s imperative to examine the security offerings and services that have evolved from ADC technologies to perform specific tasks. With dedicated SSL processing hardware options you can handle massive levels of encrypted traffic with 4,096-bit certificates. Advanced cyphers such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Perfect Forward Secrecy are fully supported.
3. Multi-tenancy
With multi-tenant Application Delivery Controller (ADC) virtualisation through A10’s Application Delivery Partitions (ADPs) you no longer have to break the bank to achieve the high density and high performance of true ADC multi-tenancy. How does it work? A10’s ADP virtualisation technology provides separation and partitioning of multiple ADC instances on a single A10 Thunder ADC platform, which offers ultra-high density, performance and the lowest cost per ADC instance compared to other multi-tenant architectures.
If you’re undergoing an ADC refresh, partition density is an essential component to virtualisation return on investment. A single Thunder ADC appliance, for example, can deliver more than 1,000 partitions, and expand to over 8,000 in a Virtual Chassis System (VCS) cluster.
If you’re thinking of refreshing, multi-tenancy ensures you’re ready for the future.
4. Cloud Integration
The world is moving to the cloud. If you have a credit card, you can shift IT resources to an IaaS provider, spin up cloud-based ADC instances, buy cloud storage or start using SaaS with just a few clicks. As such, most applications are also moving to the cloud — and in droves. You want your business to be ready. An ADC refresh gives you the opportunity to choose a provider that’s not only cloud-ready, but also cloud-native. Even if you haven’t quite solidified your cloud application strategy, having a solution in place that can support public and private clouds and bridge the cloud and on-premises worlds puts you ahead of the game. You’ll want to take advantage of secure application services that bridge all of your data centres and clouds.
