Juniper Charts Out Its SDN Strategy

Juniper Networks, the network innovation company, has introduced its vision to transition enterprises and service providers from traditional network infrastructures to software-defined networks (SDN) and outlined its strategy to lead the SDN market. Juniper’s SDN strategy will enable companies to accelerate the design and delivery of new services, lower the cost of network operation, and provide a clear path to implementation.

Juniper’s SDN strategy is rooted in six principles that directly address the most pressing networking challenges facing the industry:

Cleanly separate networking software into four layers (or planes) – management, services, control and forwarding – providing the architectural underpinning to optimise each plane within the network.

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Centralise the appropriate aspects of the management, services and control software to simplify network design and lower operating costs.

Use the cloud for elastic scale and flexible deployment, enabling usage-based pricing to reduce time-to-service and correlate cost based on value.

Create a platform for network applications, services and integration into management systems, enabling new business solutions.

Standardise protocols for interoperable, heterogeneous support across vendors, providing choice and lowering cost.

Broadly apply SDN principles to all networking and network services including security from the data center and enterprise campus to the mobile and wireline networks used by service providers.

Juniper Networks has a SDN strategy that addresses the key challenges customers face with networks today and provides a clear set of steps that can enable customers to start taking advantage of the promise of a SDN-enabled network in 2013 and beyond. These steps include:

Step 1: Centralise network management, analytics and configuration functionality to provide a single master that configures all networking devices. This lowers operating cost and allows customers to gain business insight from their networks. Juniper Networks Junos Space applications can enable customers to begin taking this step today.

Step 2: Extract networking and security services from the underlying hardware by creating service virtual machines (VMs). This enables network and security services to independently scale using industry-standard x86 hardware based on the needs of the solution. This next generation of programmable networks will be introduced with the JunosV App Engine, scheduled to be available in Q1 2013. This step is supported by Juniper Software Advantage – Juniper’s new and innovative software licensing approach.

Step 3: Introduce a centralised controller that enables multiple network and security services to connect in series across devices within the network. This is called “SDN Service Chaining” – using software to virtually insert services into the flow of network traffic. Service chaining functionality is crudely accomplished in today’s physical world using separate network and security devices. With SDN Service Chaining, networks can dynamically respond to the needs of the business. This step will dramatically reduce the time, cost and risk for customers to design, test and deliver new network and security services. Juniper Networks anticipates delivering SDN Service Chaining functionality in 2014 utilising the SDN controller technology acquired from Contrail Systems, together with the evolution of the JunosV App Engine.

Step 4: Optimise the usage of network and security hardware to deliver high performance. While SDN steps one through three enable new network and security capabilities, optimised network and security hardware will continue to deliver 10 times or better performance for critical networking functions than can be accomplished in software alone. The combination of optimised hardware together with SDN Service Chaining allows customers to build the best possible networks. Juniper Networks MX Series and SRX Series products will evolve to support tomorrow’s software-based Service Chaining architecture, assuring customers that investments made today can take advantage of the new capabilities delivered by SDN now and in the future.

Juniper Networks also announced Juniper Software Advantage, a transformational new software licensing and maintenance model that enables customers to exploit software value over time. Based on enterprise software licensing models, Juniper Software Advantage allows the transfer of software licenses between Juniper devices and industry-standard x86 servers, thus protecting customer investments over time. The program also allows customers to scale their purchases based on actual usage, providing a new and unique level of flexibility and cost savings for customers. Juniper plans to announce specific software licensing packages and start the transition to this new licensing model in 2013. Juniper Networks is the first company in the networking industry to offer such a comprehensive model. The announcements today from Juniper Networks – combined with its history of software and networking innovation, its Junos operating system, its strong presence with both service providers and enterprise customers, and its recent acquisition of Contrail Systems - put the company in a unique position to lead in the SDN market.

“SDN is a major shift in the networking industry. At Juniper, we think the impact of SDN will be much broader than others have suggested. It will redefine networking and create new winners and losers. We’re embracing SDN with clearly defined principles, a four-step roadmap to help customers adopt SDN within their business, and the networking industry’s first comprehensive software-centric business model. We’re incredibly excited about the value that SDN will deliver to our customers and are committed to leading the industry through this transition,” said Bob Muglia, executive vice president, Software Solutions Division, Juniper Networks.

“SDN promises a way for the networking industry to deliver two critically needed benefits to its customers. The first is the ability of vendors to deliver innovation at a faster rate and the ability of customers to absorb it at a faster rate. The second is a dramatic reduction in the operational cost of running a network, achieved primarily through simplification. Juniper pioneered the first step in the separation of control and forwarding functions in networking equipment. This is the next logical step in the evolution of networking technology,” said Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder and chief technical officer, Juniper Networks.