Service Providers To Fuel The Growth For Carrier Ethernet In India

Prasad Babu, director - Systems Engineering and Operations, India, Juniper Networks highlights the latest trends in the enterprise networking space in India and the benefits service providers stand to gain from Carrier Ethernet.

What are the latest trends in the enterprise networking market?

Convergence will rule the networking space. The demand for voice, data, video and other on demand services have led to the emergence of convergence and next generation network (NGN) technology. As more and more data traffic flows onto the public network via the Internet, it has become apparent that a more data-centric approach to designing the switches of the future will be needed based on packet technology for the common transport of voice, data and on demand video services.

Operators are using NGN architectures to capitalise on and grow their legacy networks and provide enhanced service packaging and information-intensive services to their end customers. Higher bandwidth, lower costs and a desire for bundled voice, video and data services are driving the transition towards next-gen WANs.

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According to Synergy Research, the Carrier Ethernet equipment revenue is expected to increase to over $7 billion in 2011 with a CAGR of 17%. Hence, Carrier Ethernet is going to rule the next generation network market in the coming days.

How will Carrier Ethernet benefit service providers?

The service providers are facing tough challenges as more and more business houses demand IP and Ethernet services. Ethernet has become the technology of choice for service providers who are increasing bandwidth to support new applications like IPTV.

Service providers need to satisfy the needs of their enterprise clients for point-to-point connections, private LANs and triple-play traffic. These requirements have historically been satisfied with IP-MPLS, which require high performance routers throughout the core. Carrier Ethernet has the potential to change the game for service providers, lowering the cost and complexity while increasing the amount of available resources to meet the growing bandwidth requirements from video, IPTV, advanced business applications and other next-generation network services.

Ethernet is of interest to the service provider only if it provides a means for incremental revenue. In the past, Ethernet was offered only as a custom service to large customers. Now service providers are looking to Ethernet as a core transition medium for three main reasons: to enable new services, to align business objectives and network infrastructure and to customise the network for the end customer.

Along with service providers, we are working on some government projects like Himachal Pradesh State Wide Area Network and with other enterprise clients who are ready to deploy Carrier Ethernet.

How have Juniper’s offerings in the Carrier Ethernet space helped the service providers?

In India, most of the service providers have deployed Carrier Ethernet in a phased manner. We have recently announced the expansion of our Carrier Ethernet portfolio with new MX platforms, system hardware and software enhancements designed to enable the efficient and cost-effective deployment of Ethernet networks and services. Juniper has also announced a suite of new Dense Port Concentrator (DPC) cards that maximise MX-series system flexibility, enabling providers to drive new sources of revenue while reducing cost and complexity.

Recently, Juniper Networks participated in the carbon disclosure project. How have your solutions helped enterprises become energy efficient?

Yes, we have recently announced our partnership with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which is a global standardised mechanism by which companies report their greenhouse gas emissions to institutional investors. Enterprises around the world are conscious about the green computing and making their datacentres energy efficient. We have taken care of that factor in our recently launched products.

Businesses can consolidate four or five devices such as FW, VPN, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-virus and Web filtering into a single Juniper Networks Security Services Gateway (SSG), reducing the physical space requirements, resulting in reduced energy and cooling consumption costs, as well as overall management expense.