DDoS Detection, Mitigation, Orchestration, and Threat Intelligence
Consolidated Security & CGNAT
TLS/SSL Inspection
Web Application Firewall
Application Security & Load Balancing
Analytics & Management
CGNAT & IPv6 Migration
Application delivery has never been more critical—or more challenging. Customers, partners, and employees expect a great experience every time they access your apps, without having to worry about the security of their data. But meeting that expectation gets harder every day, as complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments, intensifying threats, rising scale, and constantly changing business requirements put new demands on your infrastructure.
A recent Gatepoint survey of senior IT decision makers confirmed the essential role of the ADC, with 61 percent of respondents agreeing that ADCs and load balancers are a vital part of their IT environment. But which ADC? How can you be sure the solution and vendor you choose will meet the challenges of modern application delivery—not just today, but for the future of your business?
Here are five essential questions to help you evaluate your ADC options.
You can’t run a successful business on orphaned infrastructure. To stay competitive, you need an ADC provider that’s fully committed to innovation, support, and partnership for the long term. That means continuing to invest in its ADC—not cutting staff and resources—and maintaining its status as a full-fledged product, not just a feature in other platforms. If a company seems half-hearted about its ADC, don’t make it the beating heart of your business.
A key technology vendor shouldn’t try to box its customers into overcommitting or overspending. When business demands can change overnight, your application delivery infrastructure needs the same level of agility—without being constrained by inflexible hardware and licensing models. Make sure you can easily tap into the capacity you need, deployed wherever you need it, without being forced to overprovision to cover uncertain future requirements.
Nearly three-quarters of the IT decision makers in the Gatepoint survey named enhancing security as their top priority. Given that all incoming and outgoing traffic passes through the ADC, it makes sense that a majority of respondents also called their ADC’s security capabilities essential for the success of their business. To fulfill that role effectively, an ADC has to provide complete protection for all workloads, on-premises or in the cloud, through capabilities including DDoS protection and TLS/SSL offload for efficient decryption and encryption. An add-on next-gen web application firewall (WAF) can further enhance security with protection against injection attacks, account takeovers, and other OWASP Top 10 risks.
An ADC should be a transformation enabler, not a straitjacket. As hybrid infrastructures, containerization, and DevOps redefine the way applications are developed and delivered, you need an ADC solution designed for both flexible deployment and unified management. If you can deploy ADC instances in every form factor, across any cloud or on-premises environment, while maintaining comprehensive observability with consistent analytics, logs, and metrics, you won’t have to worry about your business being held back by your application delivery infrastructure.
Buying an ADC should be the beginning of your vendor relationship, not the end. From pre-sale requirement scoping through implementation best practices and ongoing operational support, a fully committed provider can help you make sure you’re unlocking the full value of your investment for the benefit of your customers and your business. Any vendor can make promises, so be sure to verify their track record by asking to see their CSAT number. As a benchmark, consider that A10 has achieved a CSAT of 91 percent worldwide and 93 percent in North America—though we’re never satisfied with less than 100 percent.
Want to see why thousands of global ADC deployments over more than a decade have earned A10 a strong reputation for committed partnership, innovative functionality, reliable security, and customer-friendly operations? Contact us today for a free trial.
