F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway compete in the application delivery and security category. F5 BIG-IP LTM seems to have the upper hand for feature-rich environments and customization, while Azure Application Gateway is preferred for ease of integration and scalability in cloud environments.
Features: F5 BIG-IP LTM offers advanced scripting with iRules, iControl, and comprehensive application management tools, making it highly customizable with robust hardware performance. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, by contrast, is noted for its ease of use, auto-scaling capabilities, and seamless integration with other Azure services. Azure also excels in providing strong security with its Web Application Firewall (WAF).
Room for Improvement: F5 BIG-IP LTM is criticized for its high cost and complexity in deployment, along with limited support for low-end platforms. Users express the desire for better firmware quality control and enhanced configuration management. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's pricing model regarding scalability could improve, and issues with certificate updates and non-intuitive user interfaces have been noted. Users suggest better integration with third-party tools and improved documentation as desirable enhancements.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 BIG-IP LTM frequently serves on-premises deployments and is known for excellent support, though its complexity may deter less experienced teams. Azure Application Gateway is praised for its easy integration into Azure ecosystems and efficient autoscaling, though its customer support can sometimes lack immediate responses during complex configurations.
Pricing and ROI: Both solutions are considered premium with F5 BIG-IP LTM noted for its expensive licensing which reflects its extensive features. It delivers impressive ROI through robust performance and security. Azure Application Gateway offers a usage-based pricing model, potentially expensive for large-scale deployments due to compute costs. It typically allows for better cost management with varied deployment scales, offering significant ROI via performance improvements and enhanced security.
The major return on investment is the security of our data.
If we can use a shared resource, then the return on investment is really nice.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway significantly impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance.
We have seen a return on investment in terms of time-saving and cost-saving by not creating our own infrastructure.
I would rate the technical support of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) nine out of ten.
Overall, my experience with F5 is very good compared to Radware.
I would say they provide the best support for Application Gateway because they own the product, so their support is top-notch.
There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact.
I would rate Microsoft support as good because they have a very skilled technical support team in the background
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.
It has the autoscaling feature, so there is not much concern around performance; it can scale significantly.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.
We have been using it for the past two to three years, and there have been good results with no problems so far.
The stability is good, and except for a few instances, I don't see the non-availability of Azure Cloud services.
The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.
One feature I mentioned is the support for non-HTTPS protocols such as TCP, which could allow one endpoint for all kinds of protocols.
In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would like to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations.
There is room for improvement in terms of support, such as assigning agents directly for more straightforward engagement.
The product is costly.
We would prefer to have it cheaper, but it is still expensive.
Azure solutions are quite expensive.
When it comes to pricing for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it a seven out of ten.
The impact of SSL offloading on reducing server load and latency is very much positive because whatever traffic we receive, we encrypt at our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) level, which has definitely reduced the additional load and SSL decryption load on the servers, so it has very much helped us and it is very smooth; it will not take much time and will not impact our regular traffic.
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication.
We are using it for some of the security features for our applications, particularly for securing traffic in transit with SSL.
The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats.
We find mutual TLS valuable because we can verify the client securely by setting up the trust certificate of the client, and also if we do it at the client side as well.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) | 14.9% |
| Microsoft Azure Application Gateway | 6.3% |
| Other | 78.8% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 62 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 32 |
| Large Enterprise | 85 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 22 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 24 |
F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.
BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.
Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
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