Juniper Unveils New Networking Hardware, Software

NEW YORK—Juniper Networks is planning to release new networking hardware and software that will not only allow the networking company to better compete against Cisco Systems and other competitors but also help it delve deeper into the enterprise data center market, as well as cloud computing.

At an Oct. 29 meeting for investors and financial analysts at the New York Stock Exchange building on Wall Street, Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson gave details on the company's new lineup of chip sets, routers and software that he said are at the core of a new "vision" for the next decade.

"We focus on the world's hardest problems of scale, reliability, security, performance [and] resiliency," Johnson said during the presentation.

"That's what we bring to the market, but what we are doing in the new, open approach is enabling a broad ecosystem," he added. "This ecosystem will have innovators that will embrace to provide [an] open, dynamic, versatile and profitable business model for our partners as well. We think this approach, plus network innovation, plus ecosystem innovation equals the new network ahead."

While Juniper has traditionally worked within the telecommunications industry, the company is broadening its approach at the same time that it is facing competition from the likes of Cisco and Hewlett-Packard through its ProCurve division. These companies are looking to help build massive data centers for customers that use new types of virtualization technology and data centers that can support new cloud computing infrastructures.

For its part, Cisco is not only trying to provide an end-to-end portfolio of products—its Unified Computing System—but also to grow through acquisitions. During his presentation, Johnson said Juniper remains open to acquisitions but its focus is on R&D and products that the company plans to develop itself.

In addition, Juniper is developing new partnerships with companies such as Dell, IBM and Blade Network Technologies. Juniper is also opening up its software to allow third-party developers to build news types of networking applications.

The goal of these technologies and partnerships is to provide users with more comprehensive and unified networking products that address the growing demands of the Web, such as video, and the demands that Web traffic will place on the networks supporting the Internet.

Of the new products, Juniper executives spent the most time on hardware, specifically the company's new Junos Trio chip set. Pradeep Sindhu, Juniper's co-founder and CTO, said the new Trio chip includes four new individual processors that are built on newer, 65-nanometer technology. The chip set allows for faster throughput, specifically 2.6T bps.

In addition, Sindhu said the Trio chip set includes what the company calls "3D Scaling" technology that allows the silicon to support more subscribers, services and bandwidth than previous chip set technology did.

Along with the new chip set, Juniper introduced new routers that form the company's MX 3D series. The name comes from the 3D Scaling technology. Within the portfolio, Juniper is offering the MX960, which is the high-end product, and MX80, which is a lower-end router.

Finally, Juniper rolled out two software platforms that complement that company's flagship Junos operating system. In addition to these new platforms, Johnson said the company plans to open up its APIs to third-party developers. The two software platforms are Junos Space, a network application platform, and Junos Pulse, which is for integrated network clients.

Johnson said many of the products detailed at the Stock Exchange building would be available later in 2009, probably in December. However, no specific release dates were announced.

Juniper also offered a look at the future. One initiative is called "Project Falcon," although executives did not offer many details. However, Falcon will address the mobile market, specifically mobile device traffic across networks.

In addition, the company gave a brief update about its "Stratus Project," which it first introduced earlier in 2009 as way to target the growing interest in creating cloud computing infrastructures within the data center. Stratus includes technology such as Juniper's newer EX2500 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch.