Juniper's New Network for the Data Center

On Monday Juniper Networks (JNPR) unveiled its vision of the New Network for the Data Center. New partnerships, software and product offerings were designed to reduce the cost and complexity of data center networking while improving application and business performance.

Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson explained its approach as overcoming the "old network" where "the traditional approach of more boxes and more layers benefits legacy vendors, while burdening the customer with cost and complexity. Our approach is different, and it's fueled by a combination of Juniper and partner innovation at the systems, software and services levels — all designed to help IT eliminate those layers of cost and complexity, while also enhancing application and business performance."

A new "3-2-1" architecture was announced as an architecture to help customers flatten and simplify legacy data center networks, reducing them from three to two layers, and to a single layer in the future with Juniper's "Project Stratus" fabric.  New routers and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches were also announced that yield up to eight-fold improvement in network performance and reduce capital expenditures by up to 35 percent.

IBM and Dell joined Juniper in supporting the open, innovative approach of the 3-2-1 vision.  Juniper announced the EX4500 Ethernet switch, EX8200-40XS line card, and MX80 3D routers.  "We've reduced our network operating costs dramatically by occupying far less rack space and consuming less power than our old gear. It's rare that you find a technology that helps you reduce cost and increase quality and scalability, while simultaneously increasing speed and agility," said Michael P. Diliberto, CIO of Priceline.com.

New software and services were announced to automate networks and eliminate the "20 questions" routine.  Four new applications built on Junos Space were introduced to allow IT managers to orchestrate the automation and security of networks from a single user-oriented management interface.  Juniper Virtual Control will provide a common orchestration interface for physical and virtual networks.  Juniper Ethernet Design will let a data center or campus network dial up or down as needed in response to the needs of applications and users.  Juniper Security Design will provide point and click turn-up of both security devices and services (such as firewall, NAT, and VPN) with minimal human intervention.  Juniper Service Insight is a software-and-services application that delivers proactive detection, diagnosis and resolution of network performance issues.  To enable Virtual Control, Juniper announced a new collaboration with VMware that takes advantage of their open APIs to achieve seamless orchestration across both physical and virtual network elements.

Also announced Monday was the Juniper 'dynamic security model', that helps IT adapt to new user behaviors and changing data flows resulting from virtualization, Web 2.0 and cloud services deployments at scale.  New data center security products include AppTrack software for application-level visibility and control for Juniper SRX Series Services Gateways; new Junos Space Security Design software for moving towards a high performance, identity-aware approach; availability of OEM version of the Juniper SRX Series via IBM; and deep malware protection through a new partnership with FireEye.

"Beyond scale, enterprise organizations also need comprehensive network security protection from IP packets scanning through application safeguards at Layer 7," said Jon Oltsik, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "Juniper is one of the few companies that can deliver this type of end-to-end security protection in a single, super computer-like platform — a perfect fit for consolidated data centers, service providers, or cloud computing architecture."

The press event was broadcast live on the web Monday as well as tweeted through @BPLewisJNPR