Kemp today took aim at F5 Networks with updates to its load balancing and application delivery controller (ADC) software. The updates were made to better address the end-to-end lifecycle for application delivery with added automation and predictive analytics. The company also ramped up its partner resources.

Kemp is making these updates as the enterprise landscape changes and application experience (AX) becomes a vital component to business success, said company CEO Ray Downes.

“As more application workloads become decentralized and make their way into private and public cloud infrastructures, we believe AX is at the core of how load balancing and application delivery solutions, and the market, will be defined,” Downes said.

The company has updated its centralized management platform, Kemp 360 AX Fabric, to support an “always-on application experience,” which Downes said keeps applications available, secure, and at optimal performance. Kemp 360 AX Fabric provides analytics across multi-vendor load balancers, and the product family includes a number of virtual and hardware systems.

According to Downes, what differentiates its controller is its per-app ADC and load balancing consumption model, its flexible deployment options for multiple environments, and its predictive analytics. The per-app consumption model allows customers to deploy unlimited virtual ADCs and only charges companies for the load balancing throughput that they use.

The updates also include zero-touch provisioning of its virtual load balancers for multicloud infrastructures; combined and predictive analytics between Kemp and third-party ADCs (including F5) to provide a full view of application issues; and application intelligence that detects and resolves application issues within a customer’s deployment.

The ADC and load balancer supports multicloud in a variety of ways, said Downes. First, it offers load balancing options directly from public clouds, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. With the updates, it also added direct integration capabilities with cloud and hypervisor platforms.

Kemp can also provides visibility and can run alongside legacy deployments from F5, Nginx, HAproxy, and AWS Elastic Load Balancing so that enterprises can “migrate to a multicloud deployment at their own pace,” the exec said.

That is why Kemp is “taking the fight to F5,” so that it can create a “clear path” for customers to move away from F5 and other legacy vendors, Downes said. By enabling customers to run Kemp alongside F5, customers can “realize the benefits of the per-app ADC model and metered licensing,” he explained.

“Kemp 360 central provides centralized visibility into the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the F5 systems,” said Downes. In addition, Kemp can provide a seamless transition from F5 to its own application delivery infrastructure. The company claims that it provides performance, features, and price that “F5 simply cannot meet.”

Aside from the product updates, Kemp also boosted its partner ecosystem. This included adding more flexible licensing options and additional deployment and management capabilities to increase its application delivery sales for companies with premises-based, cloud, hybrid cloud, and multicloud infrastructures. The company says it does more than 95 percent of its business through its partner channel.

Kemp also extended its technology partner integrations on the channel side, including advanced tier status with VMware on AWS, select status with Dell EMC Elastic Cloud Storage, and advanced tier relationship with AWS.

The news today is part of a rebranding by the application delivery company. This includes a new logo and website. According to Downes, the brand was realigned to fit with its new positioning on an always-on application experience. “We wanted our brand to reflect the many technology advancements we have made in load balancing, which align with the modernization of enterprise app delivery,” he said.