What does "availability" mean in a world of #AI inferencing and ever-shifting workloads? It’s no longer just about servers responding or apps being online—availability now hinges on response quality, utility, and even user perception. A fast system that delivers irrelevant or wrong answers? That’s simply unavailable to its users. In this episode of Pop Goes the Stack, #F5's Lori MacVittie, Joel Moses, and special guest Ken Salchow explore how AI systems are changing the availability game. From the historical binary days of “up or down” to today’s nuanced measures of responsiveness and correctness, they dive into the challenges of keeping apps fast, reliable, and meaningful. Listen in to learn how AI inferencing workloads redefine availability metrics, why availability now requires response quality and utility, and whether or not "emotionally available" AI (yes, really) might be the future. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to Pop Goes the Stack 00:26 Impact of inference series: Availability 01:44 Early days: Binary availability 03:02 Does AI change availability's definition or how we measure it? 04:36 When "available" doesn’t mean "useful" 06:07 Redefining availability metrics 08:30 Business and liability considerations 10:50 Evolving challenges: Agentic AI and client-side considerations 13:54 Synthetic transactions: Old lessons for AI 17:14 Modern availability requirements 19:04 Key takeaways: Availability lessons for enterprises Find out more in the blog How AI inference changes application delivery: https://go.f5.net/amurk37v Read the white paper Ken references, Passive Monitoring—Maintaining Performance and Health: https://go.f5.net/e1mpj2gb Learn how you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your stack whole with additional insights on app security, multicloud, AI, and emerging tech: https://go.f5.net/pcpxuhc3 More about F5: https://go.f5.net/1zalhk7i Read our blog: https://go.f5.net/9r1jzkw2 Follow us on LinkedIn: https://go.f5.net/hnsafnxm

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