F5 CEO On ‘ADC 3.0,’ Cloud Repatriation And The Citrix Displacement Mission For Partners

F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou speaks with CRN about why the market should be paying attention to the next generation of ADCs, AI and the cloud repatriation trend and why the company is targeting Citrix customers right now with the help of F5 partners.

Application delivery and security specialist F5 has been vocal about the return to its roots with its recently launched Application Delivery Controller “ADC 3.0” strategy and its all-in-one application delivery and security platform, which integrates BIG-IP, distributed cloud services, and NGINX technology into one place. The moves the company is making on the product front signifies that F5 is ready to help enterprises meet the moment of multi-cloud networking, AI, and API security, the company unveiled last month at its annual AppWorld 2025 event.

Throughout the company’s evolution in recent years, F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou has picked up on a few things that are very important to enterprises. One is the importance of hybrid and multi-cloud strategies because businesses are learning that the cloud isn't a fit for everyone. Cloud repatriation is real, and there's a lot of complexity around delivering and securing applications across various environments, especially in the AI era, Locoh-Donou said. To that end, F5’s new application delivery and security platform integrates all delivery and security functionalities into a single software stack and is deployable in hardware, software, or SaaS, which will help address the needs of large enterprises and meet them where they are.

At the same time that F5 is positioning itself as a comprehensive solution for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the company is targeting unhappy Citrix customers that are bearing the brunt of the changes the company has made after being taken private. Citrix has also made a plethora of unpopular channel changes, and F5 is working with its existing and new partners to capitalize on the Citrix displacement opportunity.

Locoh-Donou recently sat down with CRN to talk about the next generation of ADCs and why the market should be paying attention, the cloud repatriation trend, and the massive opportunity to go after Citrix customers with the help of its partners.

Here’s what Locoh-Donou had to say.

Why is now the time for the next generation of ADCs and why should partners be paying attention?

Essentially, the reason “why now” is key is because all enterprises are adopting hybrid and multi-cloud postures for their application portfolio. A few years ago, people thought that all apps would go into a single public cloud, and that has not happened. People find their apps across Azure, AWS, Google, et cetera. On-prem is still a really big thing, and so people have to deploy their applications across all these environments. And when you do that, delivering and securing these applications or app components across these environments is actually quite complex. It's already very complex because people have many apps, they have many app components, they have many APIs that they need to deliver and secure, and all these things are connected between them in multiple locations. Now enters AI and generative AI is going to make that whole complex thing exponentially worse, because generative AI brings new things you need to connect related to data, data stores, AI models and AI factories. We were not connecting these things before, and generative AI brings new security threats that we hadn’t thought about before. So now you need to connect more things and you have way more security problems. One has to take time to reset and say: “OK, we were already in trouble because things were complex and they were difficult to deliver and secure, and now the trouble is going to be bigger.” What F5 has done, and the reason now is the time for the channel not just to pay attention to us, but to invest in F5, is because we have remained focused on one space, which is app delivery and security for the last 20 years. That’s a choice, by the way, because we could have done multiple acquisitions in different areas, but we chose to do that. We did make acquisitions in that space because we wanted to innovate and build the next generation of ADCs and we have now done that, and the market right now is coming to need those next generation of ADCs. So, what are they? We’re calling them ADC 3.0. And what [this is] is the convergence of all delivery and security functionalities in a single software stack.

Number two, the ability to deploy that software stack in hardware, software or software as a service, which no other company has done. And so, we’re seeing really increased momentum at F5 and with our partners, because customers are looking for the [one] company [they] can [use] to deliver and secure all [their] apps. I don’t want to have 17 vendors to do that. I want a company that has all this functionality, and I don’t want to have a different company because I’m in the cloud or I’m in a data center. So F5 really is that company that consolidates all these apps, delivery and security services, enables deployment of them in any form factor, and also automates all of that. And those are the investments we've made. That’s ADC 3.0. It really is that single convert platform to deliver and secure all apps. So, if you’re a channel partner of F5 and you have invested in skills and knowledge of F5, you’re in a great place because what’s happening right now is there is a huge portion of our install base that needs to be refreshed over the next couple of years. So, the motion and the playbook that our partners know very well is: “OK, how do I do tech refresh on this install base?” They know how. They know who the customers are. They know the motion. They have now the opportunity when they’re doing that tech refresh, not just to take a customer from: “OK, you’re using F5 narrowly here. Now you’re going to use the same functions and just use a more recent box,” but they have the opportunity to take that tech refresh and broaden the conversation to the customer to say: “How do I take you from this ADC 1.0 that you're using to an ADC 3.0 platform?” And when they do that, they consolidate more spend from the customer and that’s a significant opportunity for growth for F5’s partners.

Was it a happy accident that F5 launched its ADC 3.0 strategy at a time when many customers are ready for a tech refresh?

That was a happy accident. There are two accidents there. One is that [customers had been holding back on tech refreshes over the last couple of years until now] and the other is, frankly, we were working on the [ADC 3.0 strategy] for a while, knowing that things were getting more and more complex for customers and we needed a platform that would converge all of the stuff and create a single point of control for customers to do app delivery and security. We knew that. But what we did not anticipate — and this is way more luck than brilliance — was the way AI would impact app delivery and security. I did not know three years ago that AI applications, first of all, would grow so rapidly and would be so distributed, so connected, that without ADC 3.0, it's going to be very difficult for people to really deploy these applications in the way they want to. That’s the other happy accident. ADC 3.0 is not just the platform for the hybrid, multi-cloud era, it’s the platform for delivering and securing apps in the AI era.

How big is the Citrix displacement opportunity right now for partners?

We have displaced several hundred customers from Citrix already over the last two-plus years, and it’s continuing. I think, first of all, [Citrix] made some quite unfortunate decisions with their partners and around how they are approaching customers … and customers have a long memory. In the short run, I think it may well pay off in terms of their financial model, but F5 — we are a very long-term focused company. We have this mission and drive to say: “We're going to build a better digital world with our partners [and] our customers.” That happens over time. Understanding their applications [and] always innovating to make it easier to deliver applications. I think there’s a philosophy with F5 that we're going to be there for our customers, innovate where they need us to innovate and do that over the long term. And when we do that, they’ll find value and we make money. Technology companies; it’s our belief that if they do that over time, they win over the long term, and that’s what we want to be.

How is the cloud repatriation trend opening the door for partners to help enterprises with app delivery and security?

That’s a great question. First of all, let’s speak to the trend. When you hear 80 percent of companies have repatriated apps, what that tells me is that enterprises are getting way smarter about where it makes sense to have an app. A lot of these enterprises had mandates. Oftentimes it was top-down. A new CIO says: “We’re going all-in, in the cloud. We’re going to be cloud-first.” So, the pendulum [swung] all the way. They put all these apps in the cloud and then [said]: “Hold on. This app is doing exactly the same thing it was doing, but it's costing us three times the amount of money. Do we really want to do that?” So, companies are getting way smarter about where it makes sense to put an app and the big trend that you’ll see is enterprises are choosing the best environment for each application. Companies are doing that even though it’s extraordinarily difficult to do it today.

The trend our partners can leverage is going to customers and saying: “We can help you do what you’re trying to do, but do it in a way that’s way easier than what you’ve had to do before, because there was not a platform like this before. Now you can do it and it’s way easier.” All these customers that are reinvesting in data centers and increasing data center capacity, but still need to have stuff in the cloud, how do we help them do that? Deliver and secure their apps in all these environments, but do it in a way that is ridiculously easy? That’s the exploitation that we can make that is a win for the customer, a win for the partner, and ultimately, a win for F5 as well.

What’s F5’s message to partners?

I want our partners to change the conversation. That’s my message. We have big opportunities in front of us because the market is coming to us. The market is hybrid and multi-cloud. There’s this big tech refresh opportunity. Of course, you’re going to capture that, but don’t just capture the tech refresh opportunity. Change the conversation from ADC 1.0 to a journey to ADC 3.0. Change the conversation from: “Yes, Mr. Customer, we can refresh, but that solves a slice of your pain point” to “how we solve your bigger pain point, which is, we’re going to greatly simplify your environment. We’re going to help you deliver and secure all your apps with a single platform and bring automation and bring AI to your ADCs so that It's way easier to use them. It's a centralized console where you can push all your policies to one place.” The big message is: Change the conversation to a journey for customers to adopt ADC 3.0 to make their lives way simpler.