Gartner defines cloud web application and API protection (WAAP) as a category of security solutions designed to protect web applications and APIs from different types of attacks, irrespective of the hosting location. Typically delivered as a service, cloud WAAP is a consolidation of multiple capabilities offered as a series of security modules and designed to protect against a broad range of runtime attacks. Core capabilities are web application firewalls (WAFs), distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, protection against advanced API attacks and automated (bot) traffic management. A cloud WAAP solution must incorporate all four core capabilities within the same offering.
The market for distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation includes vendors that detect and mitigate DDoS attacks and offer it as a dedicated offering. It includes specialty vendors, whose primary focus is DDoS mitigation, as well as providers that offer DDoS mitigation as a feature of other services. These include dedicated appliance-based vendors, communication service providers (CSPs), content delivery network (CDN) vendors, hosting providers and cloud infrastructure and platform services (CIPS) vendors.
Edge computing platform (ECP) delivers software infrastructure and/or services to support edge applications and data processing, centralized management and orchestration of the edge software stack at many remote sites, and edge, cloud and endpoint connectivity and integration. The ECP market provides a foundation, management and orchestration, and cloud integration for widely distributed edge computing nodes where a large number of locations and zero-touch management are required. Edge computing locations are at or near the physical edge (e.g., plant floors, retail stores, vehicles, 5G mobile edge compute [MEC], micro data centers, etc.). The ECP supports edge workloads, which demand low latency, local data processing and/or disconnected state. This includes local applications, data filtering, streaming data analysis, closed-loop automation and AI/machine learning (ML). Containers are the most common edge-native application architecture, with variants of Kubernetes clustering. However, virtual machines are also used to support traditional or existing operational technology (OT) workloads. The ECP can be software and/or services. It doesn’t include hardware — although the software infrastructure of some ECPs can be integrated (as appliances) in hardware, or limited to specialty hardware.
Edge Distribution Platform (EDP) is a highly distributed, edge-based, integrated network and cloud delivery infrastructure. It provides as-a-service functionalities such as edge compute and storage, web application and perimeter security, content and API acceleration, and data and analytics and AI applications. Edge distribution platform providers offer these functionalities by deploying network, compute, storage and caching nodes across geographically distributed self-owned or third party data center locations. Figure 1 shows the functionalities and potential offerings provided from an edge distribution platform