What is hybrid multicloud application delivery and how do you modernize your platform?

This webinar examines the critical operational trade-offs between legacy on-premises control and cloud-native SaaS agility, detailing how organizations can modernize their infrastructure without sacrificing data custody. Using the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), you will discover how to improve visibility, strengthen resilience, and expand protection across all of your environments. We explore the core architectural shifts, regulatory compliance strategies, and real-world banking case studies required to unify, secure, and scale application delivery across any hybrid multicloud environment.

Webinar summary

• The paradigm shift (extending the platform): You no longer have to compromise between SaaS agility and local infrastructure control. Complement your existing application delivery architecture with F5 Distributed Cloud Services—including API Security, Bot Defense, globally resilient DNS, upstream DDoS Protection, and Web Application Firewall (WAF).
• Zero-trust sovereignty: Define security policies centrally in the cloud, but enforce them locally on-premises. Private SSL decryption keys and raw data workloads never leave your secure perimeter.
• Upstream mitigation: Intercept volumetric DDoS and automated bot traffic upstream on F5's global network before it reaches and saturates local corporate bandwidth.

Why are enterprises moving away from the "on-premises vs. SaaS" debate?

Enterprises are shifting to a hybrid model because no single deployment method satisfies all operational, security, and data sovereignty requirements simultaneously.

For years, IT teams treated infrastructure decisions as a binary choice: either maintain strict local control on-premises or chase rapid agility in the cloud. Ripping out existing investments in physical or virtual application delivery controllers (ADCs) like F5 BIG-IP is highly inefficient and ignores the strict regulatory compliance mandates that keep critical workloads on-premises.

By extending existing on-premises deployments—whether running on physical hardware, virtual appliances, or modern container environments—with SaaS-delivered capabilities from F5 Distributed Cloud Services, organizations retain absolute data custody while gaining cloud-native features like automated patching, consolidated multi-cloud routing, and global security governance.

What are the 5 forces driving hybrid multicloud application delivery?

Modern enterprise architecture is shaped by five distinct operational and regulatory forces pulling infrastructure designs in opposite directions:

1. Operational simplicity: Traditional software upgrades and hardware capacity planning consume massive IT cycles. SaaS-delivered models offload life-cycle management, automatic feature upgrades, and real-time security patching.
2. Data custody & sovereignty: Rigid regional privacy laws (such as GDPR in the EU vs. the US Cloud Act) and geopolitical tensions dictate that sensitive transaction data must remain physically isolated within sovereign boundaries.
3. Regulatory compliance: Directives like DORA and NIS2 mandate strict service resilience, risk management, and incident reporting under threat of massive executive liability.
4. Multi-cloud resiliency: Catastrophic public cloud outages show that relying on a single cloud provider is a critical risk. True resilience requires distributing application delivery paths across on-premises and diverse cloud environments.
5. AI inference economics: Data from F5's State of Application Strategy Report shows that 78% of enterprises deploy and operate their own AI inferencing models across hybrid infrastructure environments. Local hosting and self-managed deployments avoid the unpredictable transaction costs and data exposure risks associated with relying solely on public cloud AI services.

How do you keep SSL decryption keys local when using SaaS security?

You keep encryption keys and data payloads local by using a hybrid architecture that separates the control plane (SaaS policy definition) from the data plane (local policy enforcement).

F5 Distributed Cloud Services accomplish this by utilizing two specialized edge nodes:

• Regional Edge (RE): Deployed on F5’s global, high-capacity network of Points of Presence (PoPs) to absorb volumetric DDoS attacks and route global traffic upstream.
• Customer Edge (CE): Deployed locally inside your secure private data center, colocation facility, or private cloud.

This separation means your security policies are configured centrally in the F5 SaaS console, but SSL decryption, payload inspection, and policy enforcement happen strictly on your Customer Edge (CE). Your private keys stay on-premises and are inaccessible to F5 or any external cloud entity, ensuring sovereignty and compliance. Keys are secured locally using F5’s patented Blindfold encryption technology, where policy is managed centrally on the control plane, but actual decryption and enforcement occur strictly on the data plane.

What are the three pillars of SaaS-delivered extension?

Augmenting your core application environment with SaaS-based capabilities from F5 Distributed Cloud Services focuses on three technical pillars:

• Pillar 1: Consolidated multicloud visibility
  Aggregate performance telemetry from across physical data centers, public clouds, and edge locations into a unified dashboard. Automatically discover operational blind spots, cataloging shadow and zombie APIs before they are exploited.
• Pillar 2: Upstream threat mitigation
  Intercept volumetric network attacks at F5's Regional Edge before they saturate your physical internet bandwidth. Centralized management allows security teams to deploy global "one-click" virtual patches during zero-day vulnerability events (such as Log4j).
• Pillar 3: Active business continuity
  Eliminate single-point-of-failure risks by utilizing globally distributed secondary DNS and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) to coordinate automated, sub-second traffic redirection during outages.

What are real-world examples of hybrid application delivery?

Use case 1: International banking group (sovereignty compliance)

• The challenge: Modernize an aging application environment and deploy new security tools while complying with rigid national banking data residency regulations.
• The solution: Deployed F5 Customer Edge nodes to ensure that all data decryption, payload inspection, and private key custody remained strictly on-premises.
• The result: Maintained 100% regulatory compliance while successfully offloading secondary DNS and volumetric DDoS mitigation upstream to F5 Regional Edge nodes.

Use case 2: Cooperative financial institution (tool consolidation)

• The challenge: Manage severe tool sprawl, inconsistent security policies, and fragmented dashboards across an on-premises data center and Microsoft Azure environments.
• The solution: Replaced disjointed public cloud WAF configurations with F5 Distributed Cloud WAAP as a unified, consistent front door.
• The result: Established unified policy management across all locations, eliminated blind spots in financial APIs, and drastically reduced the window of vulnerability to external threats.

Conclusion: Balancing agility and sovereign control

Navigating the transition to a hybrid multicloud world does not require you to rebuild your application delivery framework from scratch. By using SaaS-delivered capabilities to extend your existing deployments via the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), you can capture the best of both worlds: the operational speed and global scale of SaaS, alongside the enhanced security and localized key custody of your physical data centers. Implementing a hybrid architecture is the key to maintaining resilient, compliant, and performant application delivery across any environment.

Resources

Explore related ebooks and companion sessions to secure and optimize your hybrid multicloud environment:

• Download the ebook Unify and protect your digital estate in the AI era to discover how to simplify, scale, and secure application delivery across hybrid multicloud environments.
• On-demand session: Discover how to modernize your infrastructure while preserving complete on-premises data custody in Extend application delivery with SaaS-Based Capabilities.
• On-demand session: Learn upstream mitigation strategies against volumetric DDoS and automated threat traffic in Strengthen Application Security with SaaS-Delivered Services.
• On-demand session: Learn how to build zero-trust, disaster-resistant infrastructures using globally distributed secondary DNS in Improve Application Resilience with SaaS-Delivered Services.