F5 Partners with Intel to Streamline Security and Enhance AI Service Delivery

Advancing the security and efficiency of enterprise AI inference solutions with F5 NGINX Plus, Intel OpenVINO, and Intel IPUs

Singapore, August 30, 2024 – F5 (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced a significant collaboration with Intel to bolster the security and delivery of AI-driven applications. The cutting edge joint solution combines F5’s top-notch security and traffic management features from its NGINX Plus platform with Intel’s advanced optimisation and performance features from its Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs). This combination offers exceptional protection, scalability, and performance for sophisticated AI inference.

As enterprises increasingly adopt AI to drive intelligent applications and workflows, the need for secure and efficient AI inference has become paramount. The combination of the OpenVINO toolkit, which optimises and accelerates AI model inference, with F5 NGINX Plus, which provides reliable traffic management and security, satisfies this demand.

The OpenVINO toolkit simplifies the process of optimising models from nearly any framework, enabling a “write once, deploy anywhere” strategy. This tool is vital for developers aiming to create scalable and efficient AI solutions with minimal code alterations.

F5 NGINX Plus strengthens the security and reliability of these AI models. As a reverse proxy, NGINX Plus manages traffic, ensures high availability, and performs active health checks. It also supports SSL termination and mTLS encryption, protecting communications between applications and AI models without sacrificing performance.

To further enhance performance, Intel IPUs offload infrastructure tasks from the host CPU, thereby freeing up resources for AI model servers. The IPUs handle infrastructure functions efficiently, improving the scalability and performance of both NGINX Plus and OpenVINO™️ Model Servers (OVMS).

This integrated solution is particularly advantageous for edge applications, such as video analytics and IoT, where low latency and high performance are essential. By deploying NGINX Plus on Intel IPUs, the solution ensures rapid and dependable responses, making it ideal for content delivery networks and distributed microservices deployments.

Kunal Anand, Chief Technology Officer at F5, remarked, “Our partnership with Intel enables us to push the boundaries of AI deployment. This collaboration underscores our commitment to innovation and provides a secure, reliable, and scalable AI inference solution that allows enterprises to deliver AI services swiftly and securely. Our combined solution empowers organisations to leverage the power of AI with unmatched performance and security.”

Pere Monclus, Chief Technology Officer, Network and Edge Group of Intel, added, “Utilising Intel IPUs’ advanced infrastructure acceleration and the OpenVINO toolkit alongside F5 NGINX Plus can help enterprises achieve innovative AI inference solutions with enhanced simplicity, security, and performance at scale across various vertical markets and workloads.”

The solution is now available. For more details, visit f5.com/intel. Additionally, a blog post from F5 CTO Kunal Anand offers further insights into this offering.