F5 Networks, a provider of application delivery networking (ADN), has announced the demonstration of a new solution that enables enterprises to augment the capacity of their data centers via external cloud resources.

The new solution uses F5’s advanced ADN technologies such as BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) and BIG-IP’s iSessions WAN optimization module.

The BIG-IP WAN Optimization Module (WOM) speeds data transfers over the WAN and enables traffic between BIG-IP devices to be optimized, encrypted, and highly available – which helps empower the latest development – a collaboration with VMware.

VMware officials said that F5’s solution works closely with VMware vCloud Director and the VMware vCloud API to monitor application response times and apply business policies that can augment local resources with on-demand cloud-based resources when predetermined thresholds are met.

Through the F5 iControl and VMware vCloud APIs, these products have been integrated with VMware vCloud Director, said company officials. Additionally, the solution also relies on GemStone SQLFabric for distributed synchronization of database objects between the sites.

“This solution underscores the value of F5 as a strategic point of control at the intersection of the data center and the cloud,” said Erik Giesa, vice president of product management and product marketing at F5 Networks (News - Alert), adding that this new solution offers a flexible approach to augment an existing application’s infrastructure with cloud resources during periods of unexpected load.

BIG-IP solutions monitor application performance with the F5 iControl API and report conditions to the enterprise's orchestration tool of choice. Company officials said that this tool then triggers actions to access cloud services via the VMware vCloud API.

Automatically, BIG-IP GTM reconfigures the network according to pre-defined business policies, routing traffic to the cloud. Company officials said that this eliminates the manual intervention.

With SQLFabric, primary application database can be synchronized with a cached instance running in the cloud. BIG-IP’s iSessions technology encrypts. And, BIG-IP LTM Virtual Edition enables customers to upload BIG-IP LTM to the cloud as a virtual machine, offering the same ADN functionality in the cloud as in the private data center.

“Together with VMware vCloud Director, F5 helps deliver the elasticity that companies are looking for as they tap into hybrid cloud services,” said Dan Chu, vice president of cloud infrastructure and services at VMware.

Chu added that the integration and automation of this joint solution benefits customers by increasing application availability and operational flexibility while reducing costs to deliver IT as a service.

Earlier this year, ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon (News - Alert) Business, awarded Secure Sockets Layer-Transport Layer Security (SSL-TLS) Virtual Private Networking (VPN) Certification version 3.0 to F5 Networks.