US based networking solutions company Juniper Networks stays footed to tackle the network complexity, so that customers can focus on growing their businesses. Complexity costs billions of dollars and tens of thousands of dollars of lost productivity. It exposes to security risks; it traps talent stuck keeping the lights on instead of innovating, which downright cripples some companies. It is the new hard problem to solve in IT.
Juniper which has as its hall of fame in its customer base with 17 of 20 world’s largest banks; seven of 10 Top Global Universities; more than 1400 locations for National Governments; 10 of 12 Top Technology Companies; nine of 10 Top Global Web Service Providers; and 10 of 10 World’s largest Wireline and Wireless Telecom Companies, is readying itself for more at all instances.
In an interaction with Express Computer, M. Muthukumar, MD, Juniper Networks IEC spells more on Juniper’s forthcoming plans. Edited excerpts.
What are the Networking industry trends in various domains and how is Juniper looking at addressing these trends through its products and solutions?
The trends in networking are dynamic and interesting at the same time. The top trends can be elaborated as:
Cloud Networking: Cloud is engulfing the world whereby 50 percent of enterprise applications will be in the cloud by 2020. Every single company is leveraging the cloud. Of course, the drivers here are economics (sometimes cheaper, but also you pay for what you use so you avoid stranded capital) and agility (you have a nearly limitless, on-demand resource pool). As the world moves digital and companies are afraid of getting disrupted (as many industries have), leveraging cloud is the way to play defense and ultimately offense for any business.
Security: We are aware that every company must combat cyber threats. In fact, it will be an $8 Trillion-dollar fight by 2022. Why is that? The number of threats continues to grow rapidly. And the bad actors are highly sophisticated and well-funded – they are nation states and organized cyber-crime. Cybersecurity is a Board of Directors level issue for every company because they don’t want to end up on the front page (in a bad way). The other challenge companies face is a severe shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals (estimated that in 2020, there will be 2 million unfilled cyber security jobs globally). More threats and fewer people mean that a new, automated approach is needed to stay ahead of the bad guys.
Economics: People have an insatiable desire for new applications, video, etc. and enterprises are seeing their network traffic grow rapidly while their IT budgets are flat (if the are lucky). This puts a severe strain on existing networks, and this is where Juniper innovates to help its customers keep up with this traffic growth while not breaking the bank. There are also some emerging trends that will fundamentally shape how businesses approach IT and their networks as below.
IoT is coming: Over 75 billion connected devices in 2025, that’s up from less than 10 billion today. Every business will have their infrastructure connected. We’ll have connected cities, cars, and manufacturing plants. All of this is a huge opportunity for new applications and benefits, but it also will fundamentally change how networks need to run – many more endpoints and many more sessions to connect and to secure.
5G is happening: We will start to see a ramp in deployments in 2019, starting in Asia and the U.S. And most mobile operators will be deploying by 2021. 5G will bring a new level of throughput and low latency to wireless. It will mark the first time where wireless can truly be an access replacement for wireline. It will fundamentally change how metro networks are built.
AI/ML, Automation and Analytics: AI will be a critical differentiator for businesses. 72 percent of business leaders believe this because they know that data is the new currency. The companies that figure out how to harness the vast volumes of data they have access to, will have a competitive advantage because they’ll make smarter and faster product decisions and be able to deliver a differentiated customer experience. And companies that figure out how to monetize that data will be much more valuable than their competitors (for instance, Google, Amazon, Apple)
How is Juniper Networks developing a more scalable, reliable, secure and cost-effective solutions to their customers?
Juniper Networks brings simplicity to networking with products, solutions and services that connect the world. Through engineering innovation, we remove the constraints and complexities of networking in the cloud era to solve the toughest challenges our customers and partners face daily for instance using a common operating system and a single, open orchestration platform, Juniper solutions help our customers manage the complexity of operating in different environments.
Our strategy is about enabling cloud transformation around the four pillars. Firstly, Power public or private cloud data centers by using QFX, Contrail, SRX, PTX products and Enterprise Multi-cloud .
Secondly, connect users and devices securely to the cloud and each other- we build the best core, edge and metro network infrastructure for connecting users to the cloud using PTX, MX, ACX, SRX products.
Thirdly, by building and managing distributed clouds whereby we build SaaS deployment models for our Enterprise offerings. We offer them directly and enable service providers to offer them, enabling them to transform from connectivity providers to cloud service providers using MX and Contrail products.
Fourthly, we build the cloud delivered enterprise whereby we enable enterprises to consume cloud infrastructure and services securely using EX, SRX, NFX and CSO offering.
Juniper recently acquired Mist systems, provider of cloud-managed wireless networks powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). How has this acquisition enhanced Juniper’s enterprise networking portfolio?
Juniper Networks and Mist have joined forces to automate several key elements of the IT stack, creating a powerful, cohesive solution that ensures a superior end-user experience—from the wireless edge, across the wired LAN, to the WAN. Working together, Juniper and Mist deliver end-to-end visibility, simplicity, and exceptional performance to streamline IT operations powered by AI.
What is your road map for the rest of 2019 and early 2020?
We are actively open sourcing some of our technology like contrail via Tungsten Fabric, and building open source communities around various automation mechanism for Juniper products like healthbot, JET etc.
We are also enabling partner as well as open ecosystem software like SONiC etc. on Juniper platforms while enabling pieces of Juniper technology on third party hardware.
The biggest differentiator for us has been the assurance with which we have delivered these solutions to the production. Contrail is the classic proof of that, and we are replicating the same at a rapid pace as we take it to SDWAN, SDEnterprise. We have partnered with seasoned solution providers like RedHat, Nutanix couple with our powerful professional services arm to ensure our solutions reach the deployments with the assurance that customers have traditionally come to expect from Juniper.
