Juniper & Nokia Siemens team for carrier ethernet

Stuart Corner
Friday, 13 February 2009 03:23

IT Industry - Market

Juniper Networks and Nokia Siemens Networks are planning to deliver "a fully interoperable carrier ethernet solution intended to provide resilient access and aggregation for service providers worldwide," though an expansion of their existing partnership.

They intend to create an end-to-end portfolio consisting of the Juniper Networks' MX-series ethernet services router, Nokia Siemens' A-series carrier ethernet switch and the Aspen 'single click' network management system that will give service providers "the industry's best carrier ethernet solution for mobile backhaul, enterprise and residential services."

Carrier ethernet is one of the fastest growing network applications for wireline and mobile service providers, according to the two companies. Current plans are for the new product portfolio to be sold by the respective parties and their resellers. The targeted availability date is the second half of 2009.

In support of the plan they quote John Mazur, Ovum principal analyst for switching and routing, saying "network and element management across systems manufactured by different vendors is a major concern for network operators. Integrated end-to-end management of carrier ethernet and IP is not only highly desirable, but also a critical requirement for next-generation networks."

According to Juniper and Nokia Siemens, "A major operational cost factor for operators is the administration efforts in the network. Nokia Siemens Networks' Aspen network management system offers unparalleled features which simplifies the network management, eliminating the need to configure individual nodes and perform laborious traffic engineering. Instead, end-to-end connections are set up in a point-and-click fashion. The savings become clear when considering that operators have to do thousands of manual reconfigurations a month."

Juniper and Nokia Siemens claim "a long standing partnership that now encompasses IP aggregation, edge and core products" and to have "deployed solutions in more than 200 service provider networks around the world." Nokia Siemens Networks will show a demonstration of HSPAbeing backhauled over the complete chain of carrier ethernet transport enabled platforms at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona next week.