Juniper Networks to Buy 128 Technology for AI-Driven WAN

Juniper Networks is buying 128 Technology in a deal it says signals the next evolution of SD-WAN. The price tag for the impending acquisition is $450 million.

Following the company’s strategic acquisition of next-gen, AI-led vendor Mist Systems a year ago, Juniper says its latest proposed acquisition is another game-changer. With 128 Technology, Juniper Networks is poised to disrupt network operations and SD-WAN. The company refers to this as user-centric, AI-driven WAN.

Juniper Networks’ Rami Rahim

“We believe this combination will create a powerful and differentiated solution that will not only deliver meaningful customer value but will accelerate the transition to AI-driven user-centric enterprise networks and complete our vision of being the leading provider of secure, AI-driven connectivity, client to cloud,” Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks, said on a conference call.

128 Technology Has the Right Stuff

What 128 Technology brings to the table is what the company calls Session Smart Routing. This technology enables enterprise customers and service providers to create a user experience-centric fabric for WAN connectivity. The vendor shifts the focus of routers from packets to services that align the network with requirements of distributed applications.

How it works?

According to 128 Technology, its platform includes the 128T Session Smart Router and 128T Conductor. Used together, the technologies form a single logical control plane that is highly distributed and session-aware. The 128T Conductor is a centralized management and policy engine. It provides orchestration, administration, zero-touch provisioning, monitoring and analytics for distributed 128T Session Smart Routers. It does this while maintaining a network-wide, multitenant service, and policy data model.

Andy Ory is co-founder and CEO of 128 Technology.

128 Technology’s Andy Ory

“128 Technology has brought to market a groundbreaking, session-based routing solution that gives rise to experience-based networking,” said Ory. “This allows our customers to realign their network with the requirements of a digital future that includes cloud, mobility and virtualization. The combination of our Session Smart Router with Juniper’s AI-driven enterprise portfolio, expansive channel and world-class support will dramatically accelerate our vision to transform networking and make a big impact on a very large, yet still highly underserved, WAN-edge market,” said Ory.

Putting It Together

Juniper Manoj Leelanivas, executive vice president and chief product officer, explains more about Juniper’s vision in a blog.

“Unlike legacy competitive SD-WAN solutions, intelligent decisions are based on real-time user sessions and agile business policies instead of static network policies determined on a per-tunnel basis. 128 Technology makes it much easier to scale WAN deployments and deliver superior performance for real-time traffic like voice over IP, 5G and collaboration applications. When session smart networking is deployed without tunnels, approximately 40% of WAN overhead is reduced automatically, which substantially lowers bandwidth utilization expenses and minimizes cloud hosting costs. In some instances, in fact, 128 Technology is 75% more cost-effective than traditional SD-WAN solutions.”

Juniper’s plan is to combine 128 Technology’s software with Juniper SD-WAN, WAN Assurance and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, driven by Mist AI. Juniper also plans to combine 128 Technology software with its wired and wireless assurance. This will give customers a unified platform for AI-driven WLAN/LAN/WAN to optimize the user experience from client to cloud.

128 Technology executives Ory; Patrick MeLampy, co-founder and COO; and Sue Graham Johnson, president, will join Juniper Networks.

In September, Juniper released its State of the Network Automation Report.