Juniper Networks Unveils ‘Next Generation’ Of AI Networking With New Platform, Data Center Updates

‘This is the first time that [Juniper] is unifying all their network assets into one underlying AI framework. The power of that is you get an end-to-end experience, and the ability to manage, automate and self-heal your environment,’ one Juniper partner tells CRN.

Juniper Networks continues to push the envelope with its AI-powered networking narrative. The company on Monday revealed an AI-native networking platform, enhancements to its virtual network assistant, and advancements within its data center portfolio.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is calling its AI-Native Networking Platform a “first” for the industry. The platform, unlike competing products, unifies all campus, branch and data center networking operations via a common AI engine and the Mist Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA), Juniper said.

The new AI-powered networking platform has been trained on seven years of insights and data science development. The platform uses AI to assure that every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset, according to the company.

“This is the first time that [Juniper] is unifying all their network assets into one underlying AI framework. The power of that is you get an end-to-end experience, and the ability to manage, automate and self-heal your environment,” said Munu Gandhi, CEO of Juniper partner ITsavvy.

ITsavvy, an Addison, Illinois-based solution provider, has been using Juniper Mist alongside its own offerings, including within its network operations center (NOC) following the firm last year acquiring INOC LLC, a company that offered 24×7 outsourced Network Operations Center (NOC) support and NOC operations consulting.

“The combination of what Juniper has done with Mist and Mist AI, and the platform that we’ve built, it’s absolutely something that we we’ve been able to use to create better client outcomes, [such as] better performance, lower downtime, faster resolution times and elimination of tickets that shouldn’t come out,” Gandhi said.

Juniper’s new AI-Native Networking Platform, which builds on the company’s Mist AI platform, Juniper’s first “foray” into AI-powered networking, marks the “next generation” of AI for Juniper Networks, Gandhi said.

“What gets us excited is the ability for us to take INOC, along with this AI native platform and really create an incremental force multiplier on behalf of our clients,” he said. “It starts to bring together the campus, the branch, and the data center into one holistic fabric.”

Juniper CEO Rami Rahim (pictured above) in a statement referred to the new platform as a “bold new direction for Juniper” and for the networking industry.

“By extending AIOps from the end user all the way to the application, and across every network domain in between, we are taking a big step toward making network outages, trouble tickets and application downtime things of the past,” Rahim said.

Mist AI, Data Center Updates

Alongside the new networking platform, Juniper is introducing two new enhancements to its Mist Marvis VNA.

The company introduced Marvis Minis, an AI-Native networking digital experience twin that uses Mist AI to proactively simulate user connections to check network configurations and find and detect problems before users would experience any issue. Data from Minis is continuously fed back into the Mist AI engine for the most up-to-date data for MSPs and IT teams, according to Juniper.

“Basically, these Mist Minis are everywhere in your network and they’re acting as if they were people using the network. If the experience is suboptimized, it’s kind of an early warning system to get in front of an issue before an employee calls in and says that the performance is bad,” Gandhi said.

Juniper unveiled Marvis VNA for the data center, which brings Mist AI insights into the data center lifecycle across any vendor’s hardware, the company said.

Juniper is also boosting its AI data center offerings. Juniper Apstra, the company’s networking software that automates and validates the design, deployment and operations of data center networks, has been enhanced to provide faster and more efficient processing of AI/ML traffic over Ethernet, according to the company. Juniper introduced new Express 5-based PTX routers & line cards and a New QFX switch that the company said provides twice the capacity of the previous generation and uses the Boadcom Tomahawk 5 silicon for 800GE.

Juniper in 2021 acquired intent-based networking startup Apstra for an undisclosed sum. Apstra’s technology is helping Juniper build on its plans to inject AI all over the network for greater automation, specifically in the data center, according to the company.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise earlier this month revealed plans to acquire Juniper Networks in a $14 billion deal that the company says will set HPE up for a battle for network supremacy in the age of AI-powered networking. The deal is expected to close in late calendar year 2024 or early 2025, according to the two companies.