Application networking solutions provider A10 Networks unveiled on Tuesday a new version of the Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) platform, which powers many of the company’s products.
ACOS 4.0 brings several new features and capabilities, the most important being the A10 Harmony architecture. A10 Harmony enables organizations to quickly integrate third-party services, and test and provision new applications.
The new policy engine in A10 Harmony helps enterprises solve next-generation problems, while the improved aXAPI SDK and RESTful APIs provide comprehensive security for application networking and security development, and telemetry for rich analytics, A10 Networks said.
“ACOS 4.0 is our most significant release since the launch of the 64-bit version of ACOS,” said Lee Chen, CEO of A10 Networks. “ACOS 4.0 with A10 Harmony ushers in a new era of SDN and cloud computing; it lays the foundation for next-generation SDN ADC and paves the way for programmable intelligent application and security services.”
ACOS 4.0 includes enhanced SSL Insight, Web Application Firewall (WAF), and Application Access Management (AAM). The platform also includes a Secure Cloud Interconnect service with IP Security (IPsec) VPN.
A10 Networks says cloud providers can leverage ACOS 4.0 to ensure consistent security and application policy enforcement. The platform enables integration with orchestration and software-defined networking (SDN) platforms which, according to A10 Networks CTO Raj Jalan, is important for addressing emerging cloud frameworks.
Integration with orchestration platforms and management tools leads to simplified network operations, while a unified platform enables organizations to maximize infrastructure use through dynamic resource and service allocation.
“Programmability is key to delivering consistent policy enforcement across all breeds of applications, whether they are custom or off-the-shelf applications. As server load balancers evolve into full application delivery controllers, programmability is a must have,” noted Jim Metzler, founder and VP at Ashton, Metzler & Associates. “A10 scores high on providing these programmatic interfaces as well as delivering the necessary analytics hooks to monitor traffic once applications are deployed.”
ACOS 4.0 is available immediately for A10 Networks’ Thunder ADC platforms.