F5 Networks is acquiring application security startup Volterra in a deal that could reach $500 million. The Santa Clara, California-based company officially launched 14 months ago under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Ankur Singla, who also founded Contrail, one of the earliest telco NFV and SDN vendors that was later acquired by Juniper Networks.

Volterra’s VoltMesh service provides globally distributed networking and security for cloud-native, API-centric applications. The platform was updated in September 2020 to integrate a load balancer, API gateway, web application firewall, and machine-learning based API security. 

“F5 and Volterra will introduce Edge 2.0, an open edge platform that will allow every service to run on any server, virtual or otherwise, inclusive of public clouds,” CEO François Locoh-Donou said on a conference call following the acquisition announcement. 

“Volterra brings to F5 a globally distributed application edge platform with unlimited scale,” he said.“It allows us to bring application security to our 80,000 customers worldwide as a service,” thereby extending security to the edge via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. 

The methods used to deliver and secure applications today are challenging and untenable, Locoh-Donou said. “It requires multiple networks, multiple clouds, basic city ends, and edges. Enterprise customers must stitch this all together to deliver an app, because each platform comes with its unique set of functionality and services. The edge promises many benefits, but cannot escape these fundamental challenges.”

He argued that today’s edge architecture is a closed platform wherein customers often default to what content delivery networks (CDN) offer in their points of presence for security, load balancing, and API management. As such, “the edge, despite its benefits, increases the pain of building, running, and securing apps,” Locoh-Donou said.

Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, said F5's acquisition of Volterra reflects a change in the very definition of the cloud. “As the cloud has evolved from singular clouds used to lift and shift apps to multicloud and now distributed clouds, the way applications are secured and delivered over networks also need to evolve,” he wrote in an email to SDxCentral.

“Volterra's cloud platform meets the needs of a world where application components are modular and reside in containers across multiple cloud and edge locations,” Kerravala explained.

The combination of F5 and Volterra will create the “first edge platform built for enterprises and service providers” with top notch security and unmatched scale, according to Locoh-Donou. 

F5’s vision for Edge 2.0 will be software defined, app driven, and underpinned by Shape Security, an application security platform F5 acquired for $1 billion in late 2019, he said. “The app is the temple and all the other infrastructure is in service to it. No more manual stitching.”

This evolution of the edge will also “deliver unlimited scale” because it “breaks the apps out of the CDN jail of the closed edge platforms, enabling enterprises to run any service on any server with cloud scale,” Locoh-Donou explained.

Singla, in a blog post, also pointed to opportunities that will occur by combining the companies. “We will be able to further improve app security by integrating Shape, the world’s most advanced anti-fraud and bot technology, into our VoltMesh service,” he wrote.

“Volterra’s SaaS platform, with its unparalleled user experience and global 10 Tb/s [app delivery network] has the potential to become the next-generation edge platform for the multicloud world,” Singla added.

Locoh-Donou highlighted Volterra’s “unique combination of SaaS for transparently delivering networking and security offerings anywhere and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for building and running modern containers in Kubernetes-based apps.”

Volterra has about 125 employees, 75% of whom are senior level engineers, and it serves 50 enterprise customers, including three of the top 15 telecom operators globally.

F5 is unlikely to make any other acquisitions above $100 million until Volterra is mostly integrated into F5’s business, Locoh-Donou said, adding that effort is expected to last up to 18 months. The company expects the deal to close by the end of March.

“Historically, the company [F5] has not had a good track record of acquisitions,” Kerravala said.  “The last few, including Nginx, Shape Security, and now Volterra fundamentally change F5's go-to-market model and help them stay ahead of the curve.”