Juniper Dials Up AI in the Network
I attended Juniper Network’s analyst and influencer call a few weeks ago, in advance of today’s announcement from the company, to learn more about Juniper’s strategy in the year ahead. You may recall that Juniper was featured at the last Cloud Field Day event, where we got a deep dive into their Apstra solution. Today, as a surprise to no one, Juniper wanted to talk about AI. In fact, they doubled down on the AI Era with the introduction of their AI-Native Network Platform, claiming it as the industry’s first AI-Native solution.
There is absolutely truth that network capability within this brave new world of computing is critical to maximizing organizational return. Applying AI across the network to collect data on the full network experience will enable network operations teams new tools in their toolboxes to manage and optimize the network, and that’s reason enough to make Juniper’s move here quite interesting. When you look at the claims of improved efficiency including elimination of 90% of network trouble tickets, 85% of IT onsite visits, and cutting network issue resolution time in half, you realize that this is not just an interesting academic step into AI but a potential game changer for network operations management holistically.
How do they plan to pull it off? Juniper is targeting leadership with a common cloud native, microservices based AIOPS for the network across data center, campus, and branch, with wider automated WAN coming in the near future. Juniper’s CEO Rami Rahim was very quick to point out that the AIOPS platform was over seven years in the making, forming a major market advantage vs. other network providers. The team went further to discuss deep partner collaborations to bring this core capability to market with the support required to enable swift deployment that works from day one. A highlight of their offering is the introduction of the new Marvis Minis which is automating problem resolution in real-time without users needing to be engaged. They coupled this with Marvis VNA for the data center, delivering a Chat GPT like conversational interface to drive performance of critical applications and ensure improved customer experience. These tools make the claims mentioned above seem attainable when you consider what they provide network ops teams vs. currently available solutions.
Will Juniper be successful in this differentiation? Questions from the analysts and influencers in the session focused on the depth of capability to the new solutions offerings that integrated automation and deeper awareness into the network. There was a drilling down into the topic of WAN as there was no mention of specific AI tools for the WAN environment in our briefing. Juniper acknowledged that the WAN represents broader complexities for integration of these types of tools, but they called out the microservice based common cloud as key to the road forward.
Ethernet fabrics also came up given the importance of this technology for AI compute clusters. This is an area where Cisco has been leading, and Juniper did not have a complete answer when I asked about their strategy at Cloud Field Day. I think this is a space to watch from Juniper moving forward as they underscored the importance of advances to the technology to meet specific AI requirements in their response and were more front footed that more details would follow.
What is the TechArena take on Juniper’s direction? I love the lean in to AI as a strategic element of automating the network end-to-end. I appreciated the honesty on complexity of the WAN space and expect to hear more about their engagement in WAN in the months ahead. The same holds true for data center fabrics. I expect this to be an arena of massive industry advancement with Ultra Ethernet standards delivery to compete with InfiniBand in the advanced edge of capability, and Juniper in my mind will have a role to play in delivery of fabric innovation. Overall, I’m intrigued by Juniper’s announcement today as it underscores a symbiotic relationship between the wide-reaching impact of AI’s transformation of all computing functions including network automation and the importance of network innovation to the future of AI. I do expect other network providers to swiftly follow suit. After all, they too have been privy to the endless industry chatter on AI advancement that was the zeitgeist of 2023. But today is Juniper Network’s day in the sun. Kudos to the team for pulling off this leadership announcement. The TechArena team can’t wait to hear more.