F5 on Tuesday released a major upgrade of its BIG-IP network services suite, adding support for the Microsoft Azure public cloud and new functionality designed to be developer friendly.

For the BIG-IP 12.0 release, nicknamed "Badger" by F5 engineers, F5 has overhauled two of the service's developer interfaces. Both iRules (a scripting interface for creating custom network policy) and iApps (a configuration interface that allows application developers to interact with the network fabric) have been re-architected in Java. They had previously used Tool Command Language, which is exactly as fun as it sounds.

The switch speaks to the increasing buying power of developers.

"ADC devices have traditionally been targeted at IT guys," says Ryan Kearny, F5 senior vice president of product development. "Doing it in Java — that speaks toward DevOps guys and application developers."

One thing BIG-IP does not yet support is Docker containers, though Kearny says they're squarely on the roadmap. "We see Docker and containers as an absolute footprint we need to be in," he says. "Applications will be in those environments."

The biggest trend looming in Kearny's eyes is hybrid cloud.

"Almost every large corporation is looking at 2016 and beyond, and hybrid cloud applications are critical," he says. "They want to commoditize their infrastructure, whether it's public cloud or their own."

This post has been updated to clarify that Badger is an internal nickname for the release.