Juniper recently announced new hardware and software products for the service provider market, and expanded its SDN portfolio:
CE2000 Carrier Service Engine: a NEBS-compliant server rack to support SDN and NFV and is available now.
NorthStar SDN Controller: integrates analytics and network modeling technology acquired from Juniper’s December 2013 acquisition of WANDL, along with policy inputs, to virtualize and automate the control of physical network devices. It will be available for MX and PTX Series platforms in 2H 2014.
Junos Fusion software: simplifies and automates the configuration and management of devices in service provider access and aggregation networks. Junos Fusion uses the NetConf network configuration protocol and the YANG data modeling language to communicate with MX, PTX, or third party network elements that support these standards to converge many devices on a single management plane. Juniper says Junos Fusion, which will be available in 2Q14, will extend to support SDN-based control.
Juniper has also enhanced the role of its MX Series products in mobile networks with an integrated Service Control Gateway (SCG) for the 3GPP Gi-LAN. With existing Junos Policy Control, and the addition of Junos Video Focus, Junos Subscriber Aware, and Junos Application Aware functions in mid-2014, the SCG will support customized subscriber services. Finally, Juniper announced a 1 Tbps line card, available in May 2014, to double the capacity of its PTX MPLS core router.
The announcement is significant in providing a view into Juniper’s vision for future networks. It extends Juniper’s previous focus on SDN and NFV in the data center with Contrail to the physical wide area network. The physical network, with its role in determining throughput, latency, and reliability, will remain critical to application performance in spite of a migration to virtualized networks. Where Contrail provides services agility at Layer-4 and higher, the new NorthStar controller provides physical network agility at Layer-3 and lower.
Junos Fusion can be deployed standalone or in concert with the NorthStar controller and seems to mimic the capabilities of Cisco’s nV technology in integrating the management and configuration of dispersed access, aggregation and edge devices into a single managed device to deliver operational savings. While this announcement extends Juniper’s communications service provider portfolio as it evolves to automate operations, scale networks, and create services, Ovum sees a number of point solutions rather than an integrated solution for delivering services.
