Juniper unveils new products to lower data centre costs

BANGALORE - Networking equipment major Juniper Networks unveiled a range of new software products to lower the cost of setting up data centres for enterprises and third-party vendors, a company official said Tuesday.

“The new software products and networking systems will reduce capital expenditure (capex) by 35 percent and improve operational efficiency by 50 percent,” Juniper Networks India director Sanjay Jotshi told IANS here.

A customer case study conducted at Inter State Batteries in the US revealed that the new products comprising 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, routers and network security solutions also lower operational costs of a data centre with 45 percent savings in power consumption.

“Unlike the three-layered legacy architecture of access, distribution and core in the existing data centres, our new network eliminates the distribution layer and yet enables access and core layers to perform more efficiently,” Jotshi said.

The $3.3-billion company’s research and development facility is working on a single (core) layer architecture to further reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) in setting up a data centre and operating it efficiently and optimally.

“We hope to roll out the single layer (Project Stratus) network system by this year-end,” Jotshi said.

With cloud computing and virtualisation becoming the trend worldwide, Juniper is upbeat on hard-selling its new networking products to existing and prospective customers, as the two-layer networks reduces TCO by 22 percent.

“Existing data centres will be able to deploy the new system along with their legacy networks as long as they are on open standards and will not have any problem in terms of inter-operability or security,” Jotshi pointed out.

Juniper’s networking products are deployed by telecom service providers and used by enterprises across verticals, including banking (Indian Overseas Bank) and the governments in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh.

“Six out of top 10 Indian firms by market capitalisation are our customers. With IT spending back into reckoning, we are confident that enterprises across verticals will install our new products. Independent data centres operating as third-party vendors will also benefit in terms of space and operational cost,” Jotshi added.

The company said in a statement here that the new switches and routers would improve network performance of data centres by five-to-eight times.

“The new network not only reduces the cost and complexity of a data centre, but also eliminates the need to add more boxes to enhance performance. The new products can also be deployed in cloud-ready data centres,” the statement said.

The new capabilities will also help customers simplify, automate and secure their enterprise and data centre networks, while providing a strong network foundation to manage and deliver cloud services.

According to Juniper chief executive Kevin Johnson, the new products opens up the network, makes it much easier to manage, and delivers the right experiences without sacrificing economics.

“It is time for a fundamental change in the data centre. The traditional approach of more boxes and more layers benefits legacy vendors, while burdening the customer with cost and complexity. Our approach is different and is designed to help eliminate those layers of cost and complexity, while enhancing application and business performance,” Johnson added.