The demand came from a gap that general-purpose observability tools were not filling. Customers running tools like Datadog and New Relic told F5 they needed something different.
F5 Insight pulls from technology acquired through the Threat Stack and Fletch acquisitions and runs on F5’s AI data fabric. It includes an AI assistant trained on F5’s product knowledge base. Capabilities include explaining what an existing iRule does when pasted in or generating a new iRule from a natural language description. F5 Insight is generally available now as self-managed software for Big-IP. A SaaS delivery model is planned, and coverage will extend to NGINX and Distributed Cloud Services in future releases.
Big-IP v21.1 modernizes the control plane
The Big-IP application delivery controller (ADC) has long been at the foundation of F5’s technology stack. The new Big-IP v21.1 update addresses two areas: control plane scalability and post-quantum cryptography readiness. On the control plane side, customer automation requirements drove the work.
“Customers were relying more and more on automated workflows,” Wormke said. “They needed a control plane that could scale with it.”
The goal, he said, was to make sure F5 was not the bottleneck in customers’ automation strategies. The release introduces the Big-IP Declarative API, designed for customers running automation at scale across large or frequently changing environments. TMOS, the underlying Linux-based operating system for Big-IP, continues to be updated as part of the same modernization effort. Wormke noted that most customers run both hardware and software deployments depending on workload.
On the security side, v21.1 adds NIST-compliant post-quantum cryptography ciphers using hybrid TLS cipher groups, which allow organizations to enable PQC support while maintaining compatibility with existing cryptographic configurations. Big-IP Zero Trust Access, formerly Big-IP Access Policy Manager, gains quantum-resistant TLS and SSL VPN tunneling. Wormke said the intent is to give customers an on-ramp before Q-Day arrives.
