Exploring the Future of Application Delivery and Security at AppWorld 2025

The opening keynote, "A New Era of Application Delivery: How F5 Enables AI Apps," set the tone for the conference! F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou captivated the audience by delving into the evolution of application delivery and security technology, showcasing how it's being reimagined for today's increasingly distributed AI apps. The keynote highlighted the importance of preparing infrastructures for the growing volume of data and sophisticated security threats in the world of AI applications.

Locoh-Donou also explained how generative AI can increase complexity. He said that AI app experiences will be multimodal and highly decomposed, with data gravity playing a big role in where apps and models are placed. The keynote emphasized the importance of APIs for AI apps and discussed a secure and scalable reference architecture. 

A significant highlight of the conference was the emphasis on alliance partners and the growing market demand for consolidated solutions. The sessions provided valuable insights on integrating F5 with existing architectures and effectively addressing the challenges that F5's solutions are designed to solve. The discussions also delved into the rising demand for AI applications and the crucial role of APIs in enabling these technologies.

The statistics shared were quite revealing, with 83 percent of internet traffic being API calls and a remarkable 96 percent increase in AI-related APIs compared to 2022. The market demand for AI applications is growing at an impressive rate, with 34 percent annual growth and by 2028, it is projected that 80 percent of all enterprise apps will be AI-driven.

At AppWorld 2025, F5 showcased its collaboration with several key technology partners, including Intel, NVIDIA, RedHat, NetApp, OPSWAT, portkey, prompt, WitnessAI and Dell. These partnerships are instrumental in enhancing F5's capabilities and expanding its reach in the market.

A notable alliance highlighted at the conference was with FASTWEB. Mauro Romano, manager of ICT engineering and architecture at FASTWEB, emphasized that F5 was capable of handling massive volumes of data, application security and AI infrastructure management across multiple cloud platforms.

Additionally, the partnership between F5 and NetApp focuses on delivering reliable AI-generated content (RAG) across hybrid, multicloud environments while ensuring data security during transit. These alliances are crucial for ensuring reliable and secure AI application and API delivery, simplifying data collection and storage, and expanding opportunities for application security.

AppWorld 2025 also featured hands-on technical labs and the F5 Academy, which were major draws for attendees, including myself. These sessions provided an opportunity to engage with F5's award-winning products like F5 BIG-IP, F5 NGINX and F5 Distributed Cloud offerings. Attendees could deepen their knowledge through technical briefings and hands-on labs, earning badges that validated their expertise. The F5 Academy also offered certification exams, allowing participants to advance their careers by becoming formally certified on F5 products. 

"The F5 AI Gateway lab session at AppWorld 2025 was a valuable hands-on experience," said Bin Bing Wang, Principal Field Solution Architect at CDW. "The lab was clearly defined, well-structured, and easy to follow, making it accessible even for those new to AI security concepts.

"It demonstrated how the F5 AI Gateway acts as a control point for securing AI/ML workloads and APIs by enforcing access policies, monitoring usage and protecting against misuse such as prompt injection, model
abuse and data exfiltration. I was particularly impressed by how it provides visibility and control over AI interactions, helping organizations apply zero-trust principles to AI-driven applications.

"Overall, the session highlighted F5’s forward-thinking approach to securing the next generation of workloads."

The conference was a platform to explore F5's newest innovations and solutions. The sessions emphasized the significance of managing and securing multiapp and multicloud environments. F5's solutions are designed to simplify and secure the consolidation and collection of data to fulfill AI training, fine-tuning and RAG use cases.

AI security and revolutionizing the AI landscape were major themes at AppWorld 2025. F5's solutions give customers confidence to deploy AI applications with protection from new and evolving threats. The sessions highlighted the growth and expansion opportunities that F5's solutions can bring to potential clients. The emphasis was on providing comprehensive security and scalability for AI applications, showcasing the competitive advantages of F5's solutions.

AppWorld 2025 was not just about learning; it was also about networking and collaboration. The HUB was the epicentre for collaboration at the conference, where attendees could try out the technologies discussed in keynotes and breakouts, share their experiences using F5 products and meet up with peers from the global community.

The networking opportunities were invaluable, allowing attendees to build valuable connections with professionals and technologists from the DevCentral, NGINX and F5 Insiders communities.

One of the ways the partnership between F5 and CDW was highlighted at the AppWorld 2025 conference was through the interactive experiences and demos shared with customers in the HUB. Industry leaders, innovators and technology enthusiasts gathered here to explore the future of application delivery and security through a collaborative lens.

At F5 AppWorld 2025, two important tools were showcased: the Application Study Tool (AST) and
the Web Application Scanning Tool. The AST provides detailed insights into application performance and behaviour, especially within F5 BIG-IP environments. It uses open-source telemetry tools like OpenTelemetry to track and visualize data, offering pre-configured dashboards for quick insights. This helps teams identify bottlenecks, debug outages and analyze application usage patterns, simplifying root cause analysis and enhancing observability in hybrid and multicloud infrastructures.

The Web Application Scanning Tool, integrated into F5's Application Delivery and Security Platform, focuses on identifying vulnerabilities in large language model deployments. It allows organizations to scan for security issues, conduct penetration tests and address vulnerabilities aligned with the OWASP Top Ten
for LLM Applications. Both tools aim to improve application delivery, security and observability in complex environments.

CDW can collaborate with F5 by using these tools to offer customers a centralized view of their application's health, performance and security. The Web Application Scanning Tool can be used to conduct penetration tests and address vulnerabilities aligned with the OWASP Top Ten for LLM Applications.

By working together, CDW and F5 can help customers create, secure and operate adaptive applications that reduce costs, improve operations and protect users. This partnership can help CDW deepen customer relationships and stay competitive in a fast-evolving market.