F5: AI Applications Will Add Complexity to ‘Unsustainable’ Hybrid Multicloud Expansion in Australia
The widespread incorporation of AI into corporate applications, projected to surge by 2025, may complicate the already intricate management of hybrid multicloud approaches in Australia and APAC regions, rendering them more unsustainable, as outlined by the application delivery and security organization F5.
Kara Sprague, the chief executive at F5, mentioned to TechRepublic in Australia that the rise of AI applications will accelerate the complexity, expenses, and attack surface linked to enterprises’ utilization of diverse environments like cloud and on-prem systems.
In order to tackle these hurdles, F5, striving to act as a supreme abstraction layer for businesses, proposes two potential remedies:
- Optimize environments: Companies could simplify their operations by minimizing the variety of environments they utilize.
- Embrace an abstraction stratum: Implementing an abstraction pathway could grant improved control over diverse IT estates.
AI projected to enter applications by 2025 and 2026
F5 foresees that businesses will soon begin adopting AI services and models in 2025, anticipated to become prevalent in corporate applications.
“AI will be embedded and enhance the potential of numerous existing IT solutions,” asserted Sprague.
Research company IDC predicted in January 2024 that, by 2026, half of all medium-sized businesses in the Asia-Pacific region, apart from Japan, are projected to be utilizing generative AI-based applications to automate and enhance their marketing and sales operations.
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“Every security entity is integrating some sort of AI-assistant or copilot into their consoles,” added Sprague. “Additionally, you will witness numerous scenarios where new investments are directed towards supporting AI workloads.”
The increasing AI-driven ‘challenge’
The integration of AI into corporate applications could heighten the “challenge” that F5 argues businesses face in managing “unsustainable” hybrid, multicloud strategies.
“It’s like adding fuel to what we are deeming as the fireball,” voiced Sprague. “Presently, nine out of ten organizations find themselves in a situation with their apps and data spread not just in one public cloud, but rather across up to four distinct environments.”
These environments encompass public clouds, SaaS providers, colocation services, on premise, and the edge. AI is projected to catalyze “a range of new, AI-driven, modern applications” that are heavily focused on the application programming interfaces that are at the forefront of such applications.
“AI will stimulate the increased dispersion of applications and data across hybrid, multicloud environments,” she elucidated. “Hence, for each of those occurrences that have been progressively evolving over the past seven years concerning the burgeoning distribution of apps and data, and the surge in the quantity of apps and APIs, which have amplified the threat landscape, AI will merely accelerate all of it.”
Exploring potential solutions
To maneuver through this escalating complexity, enterprises can either strive to streamline their existing footprints across hybrid multicloud environments or choose an efficient abstraction layer to manage their applications and underlying environments with efficacy.
“These are essentially the prototypes of available solutions,” stated Sprague. “You either retract and streamline down to a reduced number of environments or abstract the environments in a manner that, you know, makes logical sense for the enterprise.”
Simplifying enterprise landscapes
Enterprises can vigorously optimize the environments they uphold, shared Sprague, and enlist in the limited array of companies that have adhered to a single public cloud. However, she mentioned that only “a handful of companies have been able to achieve that.”
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Maintaining allegiance to a single public cloud would necessitate an extraordinary level of self-discipline, Sprague highlighted. This approach could also confine organizations to the innovations of a sole cloud provider, which may not be prudent considering that AI could trigger transformations in market share and profit distribution among providers.
Opt for an abstraction layer for enhanced multicloud management
Through an abstraction layer, businesses can attain superior command. One form of abstraction is at the hypervisor level, akin to Red Hat OpenShift, enabling entities to transfer OpenShift-oriented applications across any supporting environment.
The abstraction layer built by F5 spans the L4-L7 components of the Open Systems Interconnection model. This methodology can govern “all the application security and delivery, while retaining neutrality towards the hypervisor or Kubernetes delivery across the stack,” articulated Sprague.
Diverse Varieties of Abstraction Layers at Various Providers
Only a handful of firms offer abstraction layers extending across all environments. For instance, leading cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon excel in safeguarding, delivering, and optimizing applications within their individual environments but encounter limitations in extending these capabilities to other environments, including on-premises.
Other entities in the application delivery controller, content delivery network, or edge sectors may lack extensions spanning from on-premise to cloud environments, or vice versa. This leaves a small cluster of organizations that provide neutral abstraction across the expanding array of environments, with F5 positioning itself in this category.
“Through several acquisitions in recent years, we have reached a position where we can confidently affirm today that we are the sole solution provider that safeguards, delivers, and optimizes any application, any API, anywhere,” stated Sprague.
Surging Instances of API Attacks
Attacks targeted at APIs now constitute over 90% of the threats witnessed by F5 across its infrastructure.
“Just a few quarters ago, the proportion was around 70% to 75%,” unveiled Sprague. “API security is a crucial aspect of security that enterprises oftentimes do not comprehend thoroughly.”
AI will only expand this vulnerability. “As your applications and data extend further, so does the threat landscape that requires coverage,” remarked Sprague. “Combine this with cyber attackers empowered by AI, and you have a recipe for increased risk.”
Adopt a holistic approach to API exploration
F5 suggests that businesses treat API exploration for security akin to an iceberg.
“If you think you finally have a grip on your application locations, APIs constitute everything beneath the surface of those applications, thereby necessitating multiple angles and visions of exploration,” Sprague advised.
This approach should encompass real-time traffic analysis provided by most API security entities, static assessment and analysis of application code, dynamic code scans or testing, and external evaluation of application threat modeling, offering an external viewpoint on the susceptibilities present in an organization’s publicly accessible web applications.
Subsequently, it is vital to “close the loop” between API discovery and safeguarding those APIs through runtime enforcement. “We advocate for a comprehensive and holistic vision when conducting exploration,” emphasized Sprague.
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