Juniper Networks is continuing to make it easier for service providers to more quickly deploy services from the edge of their networks.
Juniper on Oct. 11 unveiled the new MX 2020 and 2010 3D Universal Edge Routers and new software—the JunosV App Engine—that company officials said will speed up the deployment of commercial and consumer applications and help service providers find new sources of revenue.
The announcement came a week after the networking equipment vendor unveiled new solutions to run on its MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router, a move Juniper officials said will enable service providers to deliver and expand their services 69 percent faster than competing solutions.
All of Juniper’s announcements come at a time when both service providers and enterprises are under increasing pressure—from such trends as the rapid growth of connected mobile devices, the adoption of cloud computing, the use of video and the increase in mobile computing—to find more bandwidth and to better manage their networks.
At the same time, service providers are looking for new services to deploy and faster ways to deploy them as they push for more subscribers and revenue sources.
As service providers experience this “exponential traffic growth, managing theses costs is important,” Mike Marcellin, senior vice president of strategy and marketing at Juniper, told eWEEK, adding that even with cost savings, providers need a “revenue bump” from new services.
The announcement earlier in the month had to do with making certain networking capabilities and services available to enterprises and providers throughout Juniper’s MX family at the network’s edge, Marcellin said. These newest offerings are designed to create a level of scale that will be required in networks over the next decade. The combination of the new edge routers and the JunosV App Engine will enable service providers to generate revenue from new services 69 percent faster than competitive solutions, according to Juniper officials.
The MX 2020 (20 slots) and MX 2010 (10 slots) 3D routers can scale up to 67 percent more capacity than rival products. The MX 2020 offers up to 80 terabits per second of capacity—enough to deliver high-definition video to every home in New York and into New Jersey, according to Juniper. The MX 2010 offers 40T bps of capacity. The new routers give Juniper an MX portfolio that offers capacity from 20G bps in the MX 5 to the 80T bps in the MX 2020.
In addition, the new routers offer investment protection to customers already using MX routers, enabling them to import their existing Trio line cards to the MX 2020 and 2010, Marcellin said. Both routers are powered by Juniper’s Junos Trio Chipset, which offers strong 3D scaling across bandwidth, subscribers and services, enabling service providers to more easily and affordably offer mobile Internet, cloud and video services.
The JunoV App Engine is designed to bring virtualization to the network’s edge and help speed up the deployment of third-party apps. Traditionally, developers could leverage Juniper’s Junos software-development kit (SDK) to create applications for the platform, but that process could take as long as six to 12 months, Marcellin said.
The JunoV App Engine enables service providers to create a virtualized pool of resources as the edge, and to essentially drag and drop existing apps—such as load balancing, security services, online gaming and advertising—and at the same time operate apps from any vendor. Service providers will be able to more quickly find and exploit new streams of revenue.
With the new offering, service providers can customize apps similar to how consumers can do so on their mobile devices, according to Juniper.
The JunosV App Engine will help service providers deal with some daunting realities, according to Brad Brooks, vice president of business strategy and marketing for Juniper’s Software Solutions Division. Pointing to numbers from IDC and Gartner, there will be at least 50 billion devices connecting to wireless networks by 2020 and more than $100 billion spent on public IT cloud services by 2016, and by 2015, more than 60 percent of broadband traffic will be streaming audio and video.
“To enable the service providers to meet the growing demands on their network, Juniper has developed a solution to do more with less,” Brooks wrote in an Oct. 10 post on Juniper’s The New Network blog. “We bring the simplicity of an e-reader to the network by creating a virtualization platform for routers to host network and traffic control services.”
The MX Virtual Chassis can virtualize broadband or business edge services for various MX 3D routers, enabling service providers to operate all their systems as a single entity. That will mean being able to provision services, improve performance and scale, and offer greater resiliency.
Bringing a path computational element to the MX will make it easier for service providers and IT managers to find the best ways to optimize on-demand bandwidth requirements.
The MX 2020, JunosV App Engine and path computational element will be available in the fourth quarter. The MX 2010 is due in the first quarter of 2013, while the MX Virtual Chassis technology is available immediately.