It was a big day for Juniper Networks as it announced a shift from its erstwhile singular networking domain to that of an integrated platform of software, silicon, systems and partnerships to be better able to tap the enterprise and service provider clients, globally.
And it chose an apt location to unveil these offerings – the New York Stock Exchange – in the presence of over 200 representatives from the media worldwide. Interesting, even the date for this launch was well chosen. It was 13 years since Pradeep Sandhu quit his job in Xerox to start Juniper Networks.
Juniper officials at the launch informed that the significance of the launch was its alignment with the company's vision for the coming decade – "a future of networking that is open, scalable, simple, secure and automated to address the exploding scale of Internet services for personal and business productivity."
To support this new vision, Juniper also unveiled a new corporate brand identity that reflects its expanded portfolio and go-to-market reach, which now includes software, silicon and systems for routing, switching and security across enterprise and service provider markets worldwide. This is why the company now sports a new logo for its name and its Junos platform.
Juniper also revealed a new ingredient brand for its Junos software platform, reflecting the company's expanded software strategy, portfolio and delivery models that showcase the value of Junos software as the 'brains' behind today's best networks.
Vision of the New Network
"Networks are now clearly the hub of business and community around the world, and that's driving massive scale requirements for the next decade," said Kevin Johnson, Juniper's CEO. "Driven by our mission to connect everything and empower everyone, Juniper believes it's time for a new approach to networking. An approach based on smart systems and open software platforms; an approach that adapts to changing business dynamics and an approach that embraces partnership and unleashes innovation. Today is a historic day for Juniper, as we stand tall with our partners and customers to jumpstart the new network."
Another unique announcement was that of the coordinated threat control using the cloud through Juniper's virtualised security services for data centres.
Andy Ingram, VP, Fabric and Switching Technology, Juniper Networks informed, "This service keeps the infrastructure running by taking any threats by integral users on a network offline. It improves the user experience and lowers the threat management costs as the number of devices to get the job done goes down."
Another thing to be noted is that Juniper is permitting all its service provider customers to develop independently on its Junos platform, removed from its own software.
"This is critical for service providers who are looking to differentiate their offerings to customer," said Mike Harding, VP and GM, Junos Space Business. By having a platform that they can develop on, Juniper believes its service provider clients will have an edge over the competition.
Andy Ingram also pointed out that Junos Space is virtual and physical appliance so customers can associate a number of these to industry standard, which means that it will work with its legacy and installed products.
"The key to this is that there isn't another network platform out there that has the knowledge of the network infrastructure and the workflow and the various elements therein. Management software is a vendor concept of how to manage a box. This is different about automating tasks," he said.
So earlier when a systems administrator had to configure a VPN he had to configure ports, write a script and replicate it on the entire infrastructure while mentioning the various policies for each node. Now, the administrator has to set a common protocol and the application automates the task by itself. "So we or our partners can develop applications faster," stated Graham.
