Juniper opens its networks to third party applications

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 29 October 2009 09:04

Business IT - Technology

"As a result, while these network applications may be robust in their own right, they are difficult to integrate with each other or to customise or modify. In addition, because they are tied to the hardware on which they run, these applications cannot leverage advances in computing and development architectures."

According to Pigg, Junos Pulse is "the only standards-based integrated network client available in the industry today...[providing] an open-architected, dynamically provisioned identity and location aware software client that enables mobility, connectivity, security and application acceleration, offering continuous support for third-party application development and integration."

She contrasted Juniper's approach to the development of network applications with those of Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent. Cisco has an extensive internal network application development programme, and a development programme, the Application extension Platform (AXP), focused on its Integrated Service Router (ISR) family of enterprise routers, but Pigg said: "Yankee Group does not expect to see Cisco move aggressively to open up [its operating systems] IOS, IOS-XR or IOSXE for third-party development due to the company's focus on internal development for applications that reside on the routers and switches, and also due to the complexity of opening up IOS."

Pigg said that Alcatel-Lucent "is focused on developing its own software ecosystem and states that it does not have plans to open up its network OS, via APIs and an SDK, to support a third-party development programme. There are two areas in its service provider line of business, however, where the vendor actively pursues third-party collaborative development. The first is ALU's Connected Partner Programme... The second area of collaboration is in data warehousing."

According to Analysys Mason, Juniper's approach with Junos Space differs in significant ways from other solutions. "Router-based solutions exist which provide visibility of network traffic and allow CSPs to prioritise different types of traffic and rate-limit traffic. These are network-based solutions, and certainly scale better than CPE-based solutions; they also give CSPs the ability to guarantee the performance of applications. However, they do not provide a development environment, and rarely, if ever, come with applications apart from tools like analytics and reporting.

"There are also service delivery platforms (SDPs), which are open, standards-based IT platforms that provide a rich development environment and enable collaboration with third parties. They do not, however, have control over the network, which negates their utility in terms of providing guaranteed service performance.

"Lastly, most OSS solutions have automated processes for tasks such as order activation, provisioning and troubleshooting. However, few of these have the same focus on the user experience as Junos Space, and most assume that they will be run by highly technical operational staff. While these systems can define service components and activate services, they are not service creation environments in the same sense as Junos Space as they are purely based on the existing capabilities of the network. They also do not provide a platform to run applications that take full advantage of automation.

"Juniper has taken a different approach by providing a platform, rather than just a network management system. Juniper has abstracted the network so that CSPs can leverage network assets as a whole, and think more about managing services rather than managing networks. It has taken a page from IT systems suppliers by offering an open, standards-based platform that provides a development and run-time environment for the creation and execution of services—but combines that with network control."

Stuart Corner travelled to New York for Juniper's announcement as a guest of the company.