F5, a US-based application security company, has announced an expanded strategic partnership with MinIO, a leader in high-performance object storage for AI. The collaboration delivers a scalable, secure, and high-performance solution tailored for data-intensive AI workloads, including AI training and inference. The combined F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) and MinIO AIStor Enterprise Edition enables seamless hybrid multicloud operations for AI/ML data pipelines, supporting data repatriation, replication, disaster recovery, and exascale storage. The solution is designed to address challenges such as high public cloud costs, latency bottlenecks, and insecure data endpoints, particularly in industries like automotive, healthcare, retail, IoT, telecommunications, finance, and media. The partnership enables secure data collection from edge devices and vehicles, transmission to centralized AI factories, model training, and secure model updates back to edge systems. The solution also supports real-time traffic management, load balancing, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows, with deployments already active across automotive, manufacturing, cloud providers, and finance sectors.

The global Enterprise Networking Market was valued at USD 409.92 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to USD 537.2 billion by 2032, at a CAGR of 3.05% from 2025 to 2032. The report analyzes market trends, growth drivers, and competitive dynamics across key regions including North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. It covers segments by component type (hardware, software, services), solution type (LAN/WAN, wireless/mobile, security), organization size (SMEs, large enterprises), and verticals (IT and telecom, healthcare, BFSI, manufacturing). Key market players include Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Arista Networks, Dell Technologies, Nokia, Fortinet, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Broadcom, Riverbed, F5 Networks, ZTE, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, and Brocade. The study includes detailed competitive analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, PESTLE, value chain, and market attractiveness assessments to evaluate market positioning, growth potential, and strategic opportunities.

This week's roundup highlights several major corporate moves, including acquisitions and strategic partnerships in the cybersecurity and AI-driven technology sectors. SentinelOne acquired Prompt Security to enhance its AI and agentic technology security capabilities. Cloudera acquired Taikun to improve its Kubernetes and multi-cloud infrastructure management. Onix acquired UJET’s services business to strengthen its AI-powered contact center offerings within Google Cloud. Keyfactor hired Louise McEvoy as its new channel chief to expand partner engagement. Additionally, CrowdStrike and Amazon Web Services deepened their alliance with new joint offerings in AI security and incident response, including Falcon for AWS Security Incident Response and a startup accelerator.

The SaaS sector rebounded after a weak U.S. jobs report raised expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut, driving stock price increases for companies like F5, DigitalOcean, AppLovin, Toast, and Flywire. Toast's stock surged 5.1% amid strong earnings and growth momentum, while other companies saw gains of 4.3% to 4.6%.

Rakuten has selected Cisco for its 5G standalone (SA) network, defying earlier plans to switch to NEC's technology. The decision highlights ongoing reliance on Cisco's non-standalone (NSA) 5G infrastructure and raises questions about Rakuten's cloud strategy, as the company continues to prioritize its own Rakuten Cloud platform.