Kemp

Load balancing and application delivery

Application availability is the subject this company has built its business around. Its LoadMaster platform distributes traffic across servers, protects applications from attack and keeps them running across hybrid cloud environments. The product is now presented under the name Progress Kemp LoadMaster, and the company's tagline speaks of an always-on experience for applications, APIs and, more recently, AI infrastructure.

Hardware, virtual and cloud-native forms

LoadMaster is sold in several forms so that it fits different IT estates: a hardware load balancer, a virtual one, a cloud-native one, an ECS connection manager and a multi-tenant load balancer. The company offers a product selection tool to help a buyer choose a platform, capacity and support level, and a 30-day free trial is available. Per-app, on-demand load balancing is also described, scaling in and out as demand changes.

How traffic is shared

Connections can be spread across configured servers by round robin, by the number of connections each server holds, or by a defined percentage. Global server load balancing is part of the platform. The company says the aim is high availability and resilience without weakening security or segmentation between departments, and it also stresses that a data centre class application delivery controller can be extended to the cloud.

Protecting web applications and APIs

Security features sit in the same product. The company lists a web application firewall and intrusion prevention with daily updates, protection of web applications and APIs against common vulnerability exploits (including the OWASP Top 10 list) and zero-day attacks, pre-authentication and single sign-on, zero trust network access, always-on VPN, and multi-cloud authentication with Azure AD. Defined access policies can be applied to applications, which lets security teams layer protection onto what is already running.

Applications from many vendors

A library of application deployment templates helps with workloads from Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Parallels and others, and the company promises the highest reliability for virtual applications and desktops from those vendors.

Management and modern application stacks

LoadMaster 360 gives operations and security teams one place for analytics, telemetry and certificate lifecycle management across cloud and on-premises systems. For newer architectures the company lists a Kubernetes ingress controller, an API gateway, multi-cloud operations, and the application delivery layer for enterprise AI.

Sectors and learning resources

The site names defence, e-commerce, education, healthcare, service providers and the public sector as target industries. The company also publishes demonstrations, documentation, webinars, case studies, sizing guides, a total cost of ownership calculator and a community for its users.