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F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the expansion of the company’s partner ecosystem, focused on addressing explosive demand for secure mobile access to enterprise applications and network resources. By combining the power of mobile device management (MDM) solutions from AirWatch, MobileIron, SilverbackMDM, and Zenprise, with F5’s mobile access solution, enterprises reduce mobility deployment and management costs and gain unparalleled security and control.
Unifying Secure Mobile Access with Enterprise Mobility Management
F5’s mobile user access solution, which comprises BIG-IP® Access Policy Manager™ (APM™), BIG-IP Edge Gateway™ , and BIG-IP® Edge Client®, provides secure, high-performance access to enterprise resources. By partnering with leading MDM vendors, F5 extends mobile access policy enforcement from LAN networks and wireless connections to smartphones with its unified enterprise mobility solution.
Customers can deploy F5’s mobile user access solution with offerings from AirWatch, MobileIron, SilverbackMDM, Zenprise, and others, to support the latest mobile operating system (OS) controls for Apple iOS, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Enterprises benefit through simplified deployments for managed and unmanaged devices, while gaining end-to-end security and centralized management.
In addition, when F5’s mobile user access solution is coupled with MDM offerings, organizations are able to extend full VPN (virtual private network) and route control capabilities for enterprise users. This enables IT to enforce appropriate routing restrictions for users who access applications behind the corporate firewall.
“Today and into the future, mobility represents a huge opportunity for organizations, but it will always create anxiety for IT due to security concerns,” said Calvin Rowland, VP, Technology and ISV Alliances at F5 Networks. “By integrating our mobile offerings with leading MDM vendors’ solutions, F5 enables enterprises to secure and manage access to enterprise applications. Now enterprises can enforce network policies from the mobile device through the entire network.”
Through F5’s expanded MDM ecosystem, organizations realize the following benefits.
End-to-end policy and management controls. F5’s mobile offering ensures security and provides combined access and device control. Organizations can leverage the advanced Visual Policy Editor in BIG-IP APM to create, deploy, and manage device policies, as well as the F5 iRules® scripting language to interact in real time with MDM solutions to verify mobile device registrations. Using F5 iControl®, an open standards-based API, real-time publications from MDM solutions can be received and acted upon, ensuring that administrators can revoke user access automatically and immediately as policies or access rights change.
Unified access approach. By simplifying access designs and security policies, F5’s mobile offering reduces costs and improves performance. BIG-IP APM integrates disparate technologies such as MDM, VPN, and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to provide greater control of the entire infrastructure. This integration eliminates the need for multiple, disconnected solutions to address user management and operational risk within the data center. Security, performance, and availability services are all equally manageable, and ultimately more scalable, when deployed on the BIG-IP platform.
Broad mobile OS support. F5’s mobile solution provides full SSL VPN access for leading mobile OS and handset vendors, including Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Enterprises are able to extend secure remote access to the most popular platforms and enable bring your own device (BYOD) policies, reducing device costs while maintaining security standards.
Managing Growth of the Mobile Workforce
According to IDC, the worldwide mobile worker population will increase from one billion in 2010 to 1.3 billion in 2015, accounting for 37.2 percent of the workforcei. To support this prolific growth, organizations must secure and manage access to corporate resources from a wide array of mobile devices. Each device allowed onto a corporate network poses a security risk and management challenge that must be addressed.
“Many enterprise security architectures have dangerous shortcomings when it comes to handling employee-owned mobile devices,” said Phil Hochmuth, Program Manager of security products research at IDC. “Integrating F5’s security and remote access capabilities with leading MDM platforms makes sense for enterprises worried about getting blindsided with their employees connecting mobile devices to corporate IT assets.”
