Dell & Juniper partner for data centre virtualisation

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 17:23

IT Industry - Strategy

Dell and Juniper Networks have formed a partnership that will extend Dell's data centre virtualisation strategy by enabling it to OEM Juniper routing, switching and network security products under it PowerConnect network equipment brand.

The two companies also plan to collaborate on to deliver a range of standards-based products for virtualised data centres using converged enhanced ethernet (CEE), also known as data centre bridging (DCB) and iSCSI to improve network economics.

The announcement comes just a day before Juniper is set to make a major global announcement about its cloud computing and data centre strategy at the New York Stock Exchange, to coincide with its listing on the NYSE (it is presently listed on NASDAQ).

Juniper and Dell say that, by signing the OEM agreement, they intend to deliver a secure network infrastructure that will extend from a customer's traditional data centre out to its branch offices, remote workers, customers and business partners. "One that can dynamically adjust to meet these challenges and provide orchestrated management of users, workloads and data - avoiding single-vendor lock-in."

A key element of the partnership is that Dell will sell and support under its PowerConnect brand, Juniper Network's MX Series services routers, EX Series ethernet switches and SRX Series services gateways via its direct and PartnerDirect channels.

The SRX products are claimed to "integrate security, connectivity, and application delivery capabilities into a single platform for a safe, affordable, and consistent high-performance communications foundation." Launched just a year ago, they represented the culmination of several years of work by Juniper integrating the security technologies from its 2004 acquisition of Netscreen into its own platforms running its Junos operating system.

According to Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Enterprise Product Group, Dell, "This agreement will help address many of our customer's biggest challenges including a dramatic rise in security concerns, an increasingly dispersed workforce and challenges brought on with the advent of the virtualised data centre."

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