A10 Networks teamed up with Dell Technologies to bundle A10 load balancing and security software running on top of Dell hardware.

Gunter Reiss, VP of worldwide marketing at A10, calls it a “transformational partnership” for a couple reasons. “We are working with Dell, the No. 1 server hardware player in the industry, delivering our software on their hardware,” he said. “And it helps A10 on its journey toward delivering more primarily software-only solutions.”

Specifically, the partnership combines A10’s encrypted application delivery, advanced load balancing, and SSL/TSL traffic visibility software with Dell EMC PowerEdge and Dell EMC Virtual Edge servers. And it includes two products: the A10 Thunder Application Delivery Controller (ADC) and the A10 Thunder Multi-tenant Virtual Platform (MVP).

The A10 Thunder ADC hardware choices include the Dell EMC PowerEdge R640XL and R740XL servers as well as the Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform 4600. This single-service platform ensures application availability across multiple data centers and clouds by minimizing latency and downtime. It also provides application security with single-sign on, distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection, and web application firewall capabilities while providing SSL/TLS offload for encrypted server traffic.

Meanwhile, the A10 Thunder MVP is a multi-tenant virtual platform. “It allows multi-tenancy up to eight instances on one Dell platform,” Reiss said. Each Thunder ADC instance can run a different version and can be restarted separately. It also integrates Thunder SSL Insight instances, which provide security with decrypted SSL/TLS traffic visibility to stop data leaks and end-user attacks. Customers can add A10 URL filtering and threat intelligence as well.

And both bundles can use A10’s Harmony Controller for application management and integration into CI/CD workflows. A10 acquired this multicloud central management tool when it bought Appcito in 2016. It expanded this technology and a year later launched the microservices-based Harmony Controller, which allows businesses to manage applications across multiple data centers and clouds from a central location.

“It supports the trend that most enterprises and really even service providers go through with their cloudification and cloud deployments,” Reiss said. But these multicloud environments create more complexity around application delivery as well as a larger threat landscape to secure. A10’s application delivery and security software, working in tandem with its Harmony Controller address this need for automation and security, Reiss added. “What we see here right now, the pandemic has just accelerated that notion of more automation and running applications in a hybrid cloud environment for many companies.”

“But with COVID-19 there’s another phenomena: where is the edge? It’s not the data center of an enterprise anymore. The edge becomes the work-from-home users,” Reiss continued, adding that A10 expects a large percentage of these employees to continue working remotely “for the foreseeable future.”

“So the threat landscape is just exponentially increasing, and CIOs have to rethink now how they automate their underlying application and security infrastructure,” Reiss said. “Ultimately this Dell and A10 solution bundle is providing that capability of operating in a more completely hybrid environment to automate the underlying infrastructure.”

Both the A10 Thunder ADC and A10 Thunder MVP on Dell hardware will be available in the Americas market in the third quarter and then will expand globally at a later date.