F5 Networks has launched a new software-based management solution it said allows customers to deploy application delivery and network services in a consistent, fast and repeatable manner across traditional data centers and public, private and hybrid clouds environments.

BIG-IQ Cloud offers an intelligent framework that centralizes management of the application control plane to provide intuitive, flexible and scalable management capabilities for the F5 BIG IP product family.

F5 VP of product management and marketing Jason Needham said the solution is a key milestone in supporting F5’s goals of delivering application-layer SDN services and bringing superior application intelligence and programmability to software defined data centers.

“Organizations are pursuing a wide variety of on-premises and off-premises cloud solutions to bolster efficiency and reduce costs,” Needham said.

“With BIG-IQ Cloud, F5 customers can seamlessly configure and automate application delivery services —such as availability and optimization—in cloud and hybrid infrastructures.”

F5 said BIG-IQ Cloud leverages rich application intelligence and visibility in its BIG-IP solutions to allow federated services across cloud systems to simplify management.

“For example, BIG-IQ Cloud can be integrated with VMware network virtualization to simplify the process of provisioning application delivery and network services as part of a VMware workflow,” F5 said.

It can operate with exist management and cloud orchestration tools to create customized solutions for enhanced infrastructure and resource control.

Application services can also be rapidly provisioned and made available to new users and systems in a matter of minutes instead of weeks, and F5 also has a range of templated applications that can be used for optimizing services.

Visibility is also provided through BIG-IQ’s management dashboard.

F5 said that taken together, these capabilities provide enterprise customers and cloud providers with a single, consistent, and actionable view of application delivery and network services, regardless of where these services are implemented.

“As a result, organizations can simplify IT operations and considerably reduce the amount of time needed to tailor their application delivery systems for the cloud,” F5 said.