Share your experience using CacheFly

F5 Distributed Cloud Services works as a Software as a Service based security, networking, and application management that can be deployed across multi-cloud, on-premises, or edge locations. It comes with an integrated package that includes Network Firewalls, Web Application Firewall, API security, and API Gateways into a single software. You don't have to buy four different vendors or four different bundles from other vendors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services comes as a package or bundle which has the load balancer, network firewall, web application firewall, and API security all in a single software stack.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments. This unified console is the best thing because you don't have to hire multiple people to operate with different environments, so you can unify that. It has a strong integrated security stack, including Web Application Firewall and bot defense. The defense system is very good, so you will hardly experience any attacks on the organization, and it really prevents them. Security is also very strong.

DDoS is a very common type of malware or attack in the market and can be easily injected into the network. F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a very good feature that completely protects the network from DDoS and similar attacks.

Real-time intelligence is timely and gets up to date. It has a super solid Kubernetes and DevOps features that enhance the security because whenever there's a new update or patches, it delivers them on time. This keeps the network and the complete cloud services of the organization strong with unified security which keeps the edge environment very compelling.

Load balancing is an important feature to understand. A load balancer works so that if you have one server, the completely traffic moves to that server. Sometimes what happens is it gets overloaded and it increases the chances of a crash. What this feature does is it balances the load by allowing you to put additional servers in different geo-locations. For example, if China users want to access the service, China users, India users, or US users don't have to access that one device, but it gets divided into three different zones. China users access the APAC server, and US users access the US region servers. This is how it balances the load of the traffic. F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well. It also provides redundancy, so if one server goes down, for example if the China server is down, China users can now access the APAC or India server without downtime. That's how it helps.

There are some gaps between the implementation, expectation, and the reality. The main point is user integration with other parts, such as on-premises. One thing is on-prem and the other one is on the cloud. It is sometimes difficult to implement or execute and bring that onto the same page. This is one thing I would say requires improvement and definitely they can solve this. Basically, this is a critical concern.

For one thing, if the organization does not need the complete bundle, it comes with huge costing included if you're putting something in a bundle. For example, one organization needs only a simpler use case, for example a CDN with very lightweight sort of security. I'm talking about very small organizations. For them, it is huge costing because they have to buy a complete bundle. They should have what CloudFlare provides, which is a simple CDN feature and API security that is very cheap and affordable. F5 Distributed Cloud Services doesn't have something like that. That is the reason why CloudFlare remains a leader in that space for small customers and those who have just started or are startups. That is one thing that can definitely be worked on.

It is because there are other players in the market that provide very cheaper and simpler environments or infrastructures, CloudFlare and Akamai. Comparatively, F5 Distributed Cloud Services is relatively much more expensive.

I have been using F5 Distributed Cloud Services for probably six to eight months.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is very stable. I won't face any issues with stability as a concern because it provides the load balancers and all redundancy, so it's very unlikely that we have any downtime.

Call services they need to work on because mostly whenever I had some issues with F5 support, I have to send an email. Email sometimes gets a delayed response and they cannot immediately respond to your questions. Sometimes it is urgent, so again, I have to rely on their email services. Email services are good, but they need to have a good human-based interaction with the call centers.

If the organization is pretty old and already established in the market, then F5 Distributed Cloud Services is good for their investment. But for small players, it is completely not worth it. There are other players which provide similar features in a very affordable price, so I would give them a low rating.

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is definitely good with what they do. They have so many other technologies including BIG-IPs, distributed cloud services, CDN, and WAF, and they are doing pretty much good in this segment. As I mentioned earlier, if an already established organization wants to buy a bundle, then F5 Distributed Cloud Services has a clear, outstanding reputation in the market. Some people who cannot go with that, the big organization, then there are other options available. Whatever they promise, if they are charging a higher amount, they are giving the network organization a secure environment for sure.

One thing they need to work on is support, and the other one is that instead of a bundle, they should also come up with small packages for smaller players and smaller organizations who want to buy only services such as CDN or security APIs or simple WAF. They have the features available, but still, they can work on it. If with the cloud services, somebody wants to customize it, they should have that ability.

Clients can use Imperva Application Security Platform for various purposes, and as a reseller, I believe the best advantage in the product is its features that stand out for the client.

I have experience with the real-time traffic inspection feature of Imperva Application Security Platform, and it helps with network security.

I believe the reputational analysis in Imperva Application Security Platform is effective for blocking security threats before impact. I also believe that behavioral and signature-based techniques help to improve threat detection accuracy.

I see valuable benefits from advanced detection and traffic profiling during DDoS attacks, and I track some metrics related to DDoS protection performance.

I see some areas for improvement in Imperva Application Security Platform, especially regarding price. Regarding return on investment, ROI, I can say it is noticeable with Imperva Application Security Platform, and I see some significant differences compared to other firewalls such as Palo Alto, where there are pros and cons between Imperva Application Security Platform and some competitors.

As for the deployment of Imperva Application Security Platform, I would say it can be a complex process, and I ask this because we are partners with AWS. I have not purchased a solution from AWS Marketplace or deployed it on AWS Cloud for a client.

I have been working and selling it for three years so far.

Regarding the scalability of Imperva Application Security Platform, I would say it is a scalable product with some limitations, but it is also a stable product without much glitch or downtime.

My experience with technical support from Imperva Application Security Platform was good when I reached out to them.

Negative

I have been in this domain with firewalls longer than three years, overall in this sphere with firewalls and security solutions.

I see some areas for improvement in Imperva Application Security Platform, especially regarding price. Regarding return on investment, ROI, I can say it is noticeable with Imperva Application Security Platform, and I see some significant differences compared to other firewalls such as Palo Alto, where there are pros and cons between Imperva Application Security Platform and some competitors.