Big Takeaways from Juniper Networks' Global Summit
From automation and SD-WAN, to how software is changing business strategy, there was plenty to talk about.
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“Achieving more and exploring further becomes a practically impossible feat without the help of machines or automation and AI,” said Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim in his “Experience-First Networking” keynote. “Humans need to have the time to focus on innovating – on building amazing things that deserve to be celebrated, like the networks that power connections and empower change around the world.”
“Marvis (the virtual network assistant Juniper got with its Mist Systems acquisition, and has further developed since) has now been collecting valuable data from networks around the world, as well as the devices connected to them, and learning from that data for over five years,” said Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim in his “Experience-First Networking” keynote. “So even if the competition were to start leveraging AI today in their own ways, they’d find themselves years behind where we are, and that’s an eternity in high tech.”
“Juniper has a name for this [solution to reimagine metro networks] – Cloud Metro,” noted Brendan Gibbs, VP, automated WAN at Juniper Networks, on the virtual stage. “We’ve taken some lessons from hyperscalers who have built some of the biggest cloud architectures in the world, with massive scalability and always-on application usage, but we’ve translated this with a uniquely service provider flavor.”
“The network really is the foundation for digital transformation, and I like that metaphor in the sense that all the digital transformation sits on the network,” said David Cheriton, chief data center scientist, Juniper Networks. “The metaphor breaks down because this foundation can fall through the ground very quickly. To me, one of the exciting pieces is that we’re dealing with, not a piece of concrete, but a complex set of interacting components that are doing a trillion things a second, and when things go wrong, your foundation falls apart. To me, the exciting part is making that foundation as reliable as a skyscraper foundation.”
“I think of this [networking] in the context of evolution … Networking is like a living organism; it is evolving quicker now than it ever has in the last 100 years,” said Bob Friday, VP and AI chief scientist, Juniper Networks. “We’ve gone from almost no mobility to where now almost 70% of all our internet traffic is over some mobile connection. If you look where we’re headed in the future, we’re connecting more things. When I look at networking right now, we’re evolving from workloads that were in the enterprise space now being distributed across data centers everywhere, and if you look in the future, networking is going to be evolving even faster than what we’ve seen over the last 30 years. For me it’s far from a commodity; it’s an evolving organism that is evolving faster than we’ve ever seen.”
“The future, and really the present, is about leveraging software to change how we think about operations; but, even how we think about software has to change,” said Mike Bushong, VP, cloud-ready data center, Juniper Networks. “The goal isn’t to recast the command line in the cloud; wrapping up the same basic way of thinking and calling it software-defined or as-a-service isn’t helping anyone. Superficial changes like this are an empty gesture, and they’re certainly not enough. If we get through a generational change in operations, and all we do is change the point of interaction from the device to a controller, we will have collectively failed – operations is so much more.”
“The future, and really the present, is about leveraging software to change how we think about operations; but, even how we think about software has to change,” said Mike Bushong, VP, cloud-ready data center, Juniper Networks. “The goal isn’t to recast the command line in the cloud; wrapping up the same basic way of thinking and calling it software-defined or as-a-service isn’t helping anyone. Superficial changes like this are an empty gesture, and they’re certainly not enough. If we get through a generational change in operations, and all we do is change the point of interaction from the device to a controller, we will have collectively failed – operations is so much more.”
The 2021 Juniper Networks Global Summit, held virtually on Thursday, is in the books. Hearing various keynotes and spotlight sessions, attendees walked away from the event with a better grasp of “experience-first networking.”
Juniper Networks’ Rami Rahim
Headliners included Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks, and John Grotzinger, chief scientist for NASA’s Mars Rover mission. Other top Juniper executives and industry analysts presented on topics ranging from network performance to user experience to data center solutions.
Juniper also welcomed customers to the virtual stage to explain how they’ve worked with the networking and security solutions provider.
The summit came one day after the company unveiled findings of a research report showing challenges around adoption of artificial intelligence technologies. That’s despite the fact that both consumers and businesses overwhelming have expressed the desire to use AI.
So from technology such as automation and SD-WAN, to how software is changing business strategy, there was plenty to talk about. Our slideshow above offers some of the key takeaways from Thursday’s Juniper Networks Global Summit.
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