3 Ways To Accelerate Your Transformation to Cloud Provider

White Paper

Copyright © 2014, Juniper Networks, Inc. 1

3 WAYS TO ACCELERATE YOUR TRANSFORMATION TO CLOUD PROVIDER Advice and Recommendations for Providers of Hosted Services

2 Copyright © 2014, Juniper Networks, Inc.

White Paper - 3 Ways to Accelerate Your Transformation to Cloud Provider

Table of ContentsExecutive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

#1: Simplify the Architecture to Streamline Management and Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

#2: Support Open Standards to Facilitate Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

#3: Implement Smarter Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

About Juniper Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6



Executive SummaryThe word “transformation” is suddenly everywhere. Business transformation, data center transformation, IT

transformation—the term is in jeopardy of becoming a buzzword before anyone has actually achieved a transformation.

But there is a reason for the sudden urgency, and what’s driving this trend is particularly relevant to providers of

hosted services. Incremental improvement in service delivery is no longer

adequate. It is no longer competitive.

To keep pace with demands, the network has to get smarter. That

means the data center network must quickly incorporate new features

and capabilities while also leveraging intelligence and analytics to

accelerate the adoption of new applications and services. Juniper is a

leader in helping providers of hosted services transition to the virtual data

center and has introduced many innovations that facilitate data center

transformation.

IntroductionAs cloud-based delivery models permeate multiple types of hosted services—from broad-based IT as a Service

(ITaaS), to availability services, to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—enterprise customers know there are new options

for increasing agility while slashing the cost of IT service delivery. And they are eager to take advantage—if they can

find the right service provider and the right cloud-based offerings.

For service providers, this can be both a threat and an unprecedented opportunity. The cloud model is a new way

of doing business, where services are dynamic, elastic, and billed based on consumption, which is a very different

business model than many hosted service providers have today. Many customers like this increased flexibility and

agility and will demand similar services from their providers. For the providers who move quickly enough, this will be an

opportunity to capture revenue and evolve their service portfolio for the next generation of customers. However, those

who fail to transition to the cloud will be at a competitive disadvantage.

The question is, what is the most effective way to accelerate the metamorphosis, and where can service providers turn

for the leading-edge technologies and expertise to fully exploit the market opportunities of the new world of many

clouds? Juniper has answers. This paper provides a brief overview of how Juniper’s “simple, open, and smart” approach

can help hosting service providers achieve a true data center transformation—and maximize business advantages.

#1: Simplify the Architecture to Streamline Management and OperationsIn conversations with providers of hosted services, the issue of managing the increasing complexity of the environment

inevitably arises. The transition from a physical data center to virtualized, automated, and agile clouds has the

potential to introduce significant amounts of complexity. Resources that were once wholly physical are now connected

to virtual endpoints. Resources that were static are now dynamic and provisioned on demand. There are more

virtual machines and more network ports to connect them. The net result is an exponential growth in the number of

interactions with the network to get everything connected and communicating.

And since your business is based on your data center, you can’t afford to compromise on network performance,

reliability, or availability. Your cloud network solution needs to offer the same high performance delivered by your

network today—but with increased flexibility, agility, and automation.

In addition, as organizations grow they are rolling out more applications

and deploying more ports and switches to support them. This has led to a

proliferation of interconnected devices, which means more to manage

and troubleshoot.

Since infrastructure, applications, and IT services are becoming

increasingly network-aware and network-dependent, an effective

strategy to simplify the IT environment must begin with simplification

of the network architecture. This approach could in turn accelerate the

deployment and delivery of applications within and across multiple sites and clouds. Ideally, simplification would be

achieved by consolidating and combining switching, routing, and security platforms, leveraging programmable systems,

network orchestration, SDN, and open APIs that enable integration with the technology ecosystem. These are the

requirements and goals that drove the simplified design of Juniper Networks® MetaFabric™ data center architecture.

A simplified network should also be simpler to manage, and this can be accomplished both by building the network

with fewer interconnected devices and through simplified operations via automation. Many of the enabling

technologies for automation can be delivered through the network operating system; for example, it can provide the

capability to write and run scripts that automate many networking tasks, which in turn helps eliminate the human

Gartner Technology Research

“Requirements for data center

networking equipment have evolved

rapidly during the past four years after

a period of architectural stability that

lasted at least 15 years.”

– Gartner

No Room for Compromise

Since your business is based on

your data center, you can’t afford to

compromise on network performance,

reliability, or availability.



error that has traditionally been the cause of many outages. In addition, at the device level, the operating system

can support streamlined provisioning capabilities that reduce the time required to deploy new switches and other

infrastructure elements.

At the network level, what’s needed is a unified view into the entire network, including both virtualized and physical

environments, so that IT can manage it through a single pane of glass. The management solution should also integrate

with and support third-party products. It should make it easy to see how virtual servers are connected to virtual

switches and to which physical ports on which physical switches. And it should graphically show the connections,

allowing admins to cut the amount of time needed to isolate network issues in a complex environment.

Equally important, the management solution should provide the automation needed to configure the ports on physical

switches when virtual machines are moved from server to server. For example, when a virtual server belonging to

one VLAN is moved to a different physical server connected to a different physical switch, the management platform

should have the capability to automatically configure that switch to create the necessary VLAN so the virtual server is

ready to go once it is moved—eliminating a manual and time-consuming task.

In addition, the management solution can further simplify operations by providing fine-grained visibility into devices on

the network, including switches and routers. With a combination of total visibility into specific devices and any-to-any

connectivity in the architecture, the IT staff doesn’t need to overprovision racks and reserve floor space for resources

that may or may not be needed. They can allocate resources anywhere in the system, which simplifies the buildout and

prevents the need to deploy idle resources. This means less energy is consumed, OpEx is reduced, and there are fewer

spares to stock, reducing the burden on the operations and planning staff—and the whole environment, physical and

virtual, can be managed from a single pane of glass.

#2: Support Open Standards to Facilitate IntegrationIT service providers spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year connecting data center systems, devices, networks,

applications, data, and APIs. Adhering to open standards can significantly reduce the cost and complexity of

connecting the unconnected, bridging the data center siloes, and making the transition to automated, orchestrated

service delivery.

That is why Juniper has embraced an open philosophy and today is a

leading advocate of open standards for cloud-based services. Based on

open interfaces, Juniper’s products maximize flexibility by integrating with

any heterogeneous data center environment without fear of vendor lock-in.

One recent example is the introduction of Juniper Networks Contrail, an

open, agile software-defined networking (SDN) solution that automates

and orchestrates the creation of highly scalable virtual networks. Service

providers can use Contrail virtual networks to harness the power of the

cloud for new Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings and virtualized managed services. Specific benefits for hosting

service providers include:

• Interoperability with operation and business support systems (OSS/BSS)

• Ability to remove dependency on physical appliances that add cost to cloud models

• Orchestration of network services

• Ability to manage service VMs, provide load balancing, and achieve service chaining without API integration

This type of SDN solution can also increase service provider agility by making it easier to migrate applications and IT

resources to more flexible private or hybrid cloud environments. Contrail readily integrates with open source software

and orchestration platforms such as OpenStack and CloudStack.

OpenStack is an open source cloud operating system that is managed by the OpenStack Foundation, and consists of a

series of interrelated projects that control large pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a data

center. They are all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering users to provision

resources through a self-service Web interface. Hosting service providers can use OpenStack to automate network services

on Juniper equipment. Juniper has integrated its switching equipment with the OpenStack networking module called

Quantum, which is a pluggable, scalable, and API-driven system for managing networks. It can be used by administrators

to automate infrastructure in a cloud services model, giving them self-service control of network resources.

Avoid Vendor Lock-In

Based on open interfaces, Juniper’s

products maximize flexibility by

integrating with any heterogeneous

data center environment without fear

of vendor lock-in.



#3: Implement Smarter TechnologiesFrom cloud computing to mobility to big data and social media, all

of today’s technology trends place more demands on the network—

more traffic, more management and security issues, higher end-

user expectations for performance. To keep pace with demands, the

network has to get smarter. That means the data center network must

quickly incorporate new features and capabilities while also leveraging

intelligence and analytics to accelerate the adoption of new applications

and services.

Juniper is a leader in helping providers of hosted services transition to the virtual data center and has introduced many

innovations that facilitate data center transformation. To highlight just a few examples:

• Virtual Chassis offers organizations the flexibility to combine both 1 and 10GbE connections into a single working

switching structure with one IP address. While this certainly benefits all size organizations, it is particularly relevant to

smaller, less resourced enterprises that are keen on protecting their infrastructure investments as their needs grow. Virtual

Chassis technology can interconnect up to 10 switches, allowing organizations to manage those multiple switches as a

single, logical device, relieving smaller IT organizations of numerous management headaches.

• Virtual Chassis Fabric offers organizations even more scalability in network design. Virtual Chassis Fabric supports up

to 20 switches that can be 1, 10, or 40GbE devices, and it allows IT organizations to manage those numerous, disparate

switches as a single logical device, utilizing a “flat” architecture design to support any-to-any connectivity that improves

performance and simplifies management.

• Zero Touch Provisioning simplifies deployment and gets new equipment up and running faster. Juniper provides a tool

that provisions standard configurations for switches and automates routine tasks that are typically done once, cutting the

time required for highly repetitive routine tasks from hours to minutes.

• High-performance networking for big data enables service providers seeking to find actionable insights from their data,

without performance becoming a bottleneck. The challenge is that up to petabytes of data can be generated for many

sources, and it needs to be moved around in the network and operated upon efficiently during the analysis process. One

design model for “big data analytics” is to build on high-performance hardware. This model allows for near-real-time

analysis of data from multiple sources by building a system that provides deterministic performance to ensure continuous

processing. The Juniper Networks QFabric® family of products provides a high density of low-latency 10GbE ports best

suited for this environment. The QFabric architecture provides one large-scale dedicated system for processing multiple

large data streams with low loss and with deterministic performance. This is critical for processing analytics workloads

in near real time. In addition, any-to-any connectivity in this architecture means that nodes and storage can be placed

anywhere in the system, simplifying the deployment process.

ConclusionProviders of hosted services are facing a time of unprecedented opportunities—and extraordinary challenges. Juniper

strives to facilitate the transformations that are necessary in a way that maximizes the opportunities with minimal

complexity, cost, and delay. Juniper’s commitment to delivering solutions and technologies that are “simple, open, and

smart” can pay dividends for forward-looking service providers, and we encourage you to closely evaluate Juniper’s

approach and offerings in your move to cloud-based service delivery.

For additional details about Juniper solutions and capabilities for data center transformation, please schedule an

appointment with your local Juniper account representative or visit www.juniper.net.

Simple, Open, Smart

Juniper’s commitment to delivering

solutions and technologies that are

“simple, open, and smart” can pay

dividends for forward-looking service

providers.



2000575-001-EN Jun 2014

Copyright 2014 Juniper Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Juniper Networks, the Juniper Networks logo, Junos and QFabric are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners. Juniper Networks assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracies in this document. Juniper Networks reserves the right to change, modify, transfer, or otherwise revise this publication without notice.

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About Juniper NetworksJuniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud

providers, Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics

of networking. The company serves customers and partners worldwide. Additional information can be found at

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3 Ways To Accelerate Your Transformation to Cloud Provider