Juniper Networks Unveils New QFX Switches, Software and More

**Editor’s Note: Click here for our recently compiled list of new products and services that partners can sell.**

Juniper Networks on Tuesday announced a new line of QFX switches combined with a disaggregated version of Junos software to give customers choice and automation capabilities for deploying new services.

In addition, Juniper announced two new offerings for its partners: converged and hyper-converged cloud stack services to give them an open approach for data-center deployment; and a new set of Partner Professional Services to help customers and partners evaluate technology choices and develop a plan to integrate them within existing network infrastructures.

Also, it announced the expansion of its Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) portfolio with Cloud CPE, which enables service providers to rapidly create and deploy new services.

Matthew Hurley, Juniper’s corporate vice president of global partner and field marketing, tells Channel Partners that the new Junos software and access switches offering is “extremely attractive to partners because it gives them the ability to create customized solutions for their customers, with the assurance that it works in a converged solution stack or multi-vendor environments.”

“We see partners playing a critical role in helping Juniper lead the way in influencing other vendors to embrace openness and have them follow suit, enabling a truly open ecosystem,” he said.

As for the converged cloud stacks, Hurley said partners have gravitated to these offerings as “they found a compelling market demand for them from their customers.”

“Juniper partners have found a massive opportunity in pre-validating stack solutions leveraging best-of-breed network, storage and compute vendors, which provide their customers an assurance of interoperability and an ease of deployment,” he said.

In collaboration with key partners, Juniper is helping customers simplify their data-center infrastructure by …

… providing validated reference architectures, which includes assurance of technology interoperability, ease of deployment and joint support services, Hurley said.

“With an open-based approach, partners can merge the best technologies from network, storage and compute, resulting in complete solutions that are tested and deployable on day one, and enable customers to focus on innovating for business growth rather than simply operating their data centers,” he said.

Partner Professional Services includes Cloud CPE Assessment Service, NFV OSS Assessment Service, VNF Lifecycle Service, and Cloud CPE Customer Field Trial Service.

With Cloud CPE, Juniper is working closely with its elite partners to develop their NFV offerings, Hurley said. Partners are leveraging Juniper’s OpenLab to design and implement their service, as well as service creation workshops to accelerate the adoption of NFV offerings.

“Juniper is taking a very holistic approach with the enhancements to its NFV portfolio by offering end-to-end network service delivery and orchestration,” said Nav Chander, IDC’s research manager of enterprise telecom. “They are making it easier for service providers to offer customized services both on the customer premise and in the cloud, which will not only be advantageous to them, but also to their enterprise customers.”