Juniper Announces Intent to Acquire Apstra, Expanding its Data Center Leadership with Best-in-Class Intent-Based Networking and Closed Loop Assurance
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo Da Vinci
At Juniper Networks, we are in the relentless pursuit to deliver better experiences through engineering simplicity across our portfolio. Building on our leadership position – as we have been in Data Center networking based on top analyst reports for three years in a row – we continue to question and challenge ourselves to see how we can raise the bar and provide the most seamless Day 0/Day 1/Day 2 operations and applications experience for all our customers.
As data centers increasingly grow in size and complexity, the mission for simplification has never been more important. This has resulted in our delivery of many of the most scalable and resilient data center networking solutions on the planet, including the benefits of standard EVPN-VXLAN fabrics for scalable performance in a range of environments, real-time streaming of key data for unprecedented insights and actions and industry-leading programmability for maximum flexibility.
Yet, today’s average network operations centers (NOC) still drown in a myriad of device data, requiring extensive manual operations to understand and take meaningful actions. Yes, automation exists in the data center. According to the Gartner Market Guide for Network Automation and Orchestration Tools (published September 2020), “by 2023, 60% of data center networking configuration activities will be automated, up from 30% in early 2020.” But to date, automation has largely been focused on the repetitive task at hand. With such practices, it is difficult to move at the speed of business and, from an IT perspective, to move at the speed of cloud.
It is clear automation in the data center must change in profound ways. To truly simplify data center operations and provide optimum application and IT experiences, a different approach to continuous automation needs to occur. This approach should address three must-have outcomes: Speed of the business; Simplicity in operations; and Scalability of the DC network.
Juniper Announces Intent to Acquire Apstra
This is why Juniper is excited to announce today our intent to acquire Apstra, a leader in intent-based networking and automated closed loop assurance. Apstra uniquely developed a distributed systems-level approach to data center networking and fabric automation that continues from initial design to deployment and through everyday management operations.
The richness of this intent-based operation relies on the performance and programmability of the underlying infrastructure. Founder David Cheriton, who will be joining Juniper as Chief Data Center Scientist, blogs about the value of this coming together: Juniper and Apstra Usher in a New Era of Automated Data Center Operations.
Data center teams from large Fortune 100 enterprises to mid-sized companies to global service providers currently use Apstra’s software to not only define how the data center should behave, but continuously provide assurances that the network operations and experiences match that intent. Further, they use Apstra to quickly respond to dynamic workload needs and service requests. “A full IBNS implementation will reduce the time to deliver network infrastructure services to business leaders by 50% to 90%,” according to the Gartner Top 10 Technologies That Will Drive the Future of Infrastructure and Operations report (published October 2019).
What Apstra delivers is systematic, repeatable operations for data center infrastructure, regardless of vendor, and extensible to the campus for a business wide fabric. Intent-based networking is important because it elevates above the arcane semantics of vendor implementations in a way that considers the requirements language of the business and is efficient and correct not just on Day 0, but also on Day 2 and beyond.
Delivering the Open, Self-Driving Network™
Apstra’s vendor-agnostic representation of the network extends support across environments, including those running Layer-3 IP fabrics, EVPN-VXLAN and SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud). In this way, it can assist in migrations, easing customer transitions and ensuring interoperability. Apstra is a great match to the open standards design and programmability of Juniper switches, including their native SONiC integration.
Juniper switches integrate to Apstra today to automatically deploy services and safely implement changes. Together, Juniper and Apstra are unleashing new operational value to transform the data center from static operations to proactive, intent-based and AI-driven. Customers benefit from the powerful combination:
- Apstra’s game changing continuous automation for fabric management and seamless Day 0/Day 1/Day 2 operations with closed loop root cause identification and remediation.
- Juniper’s leading data center networking portfolio differentiated in the completeness of EVPN-VXLAN and IP fabric capabilities, the richness of telemetry, the open programmability of the Junos OS and our proven open source overlay used by leading DevOps teams, such as Gamesys and Deutsche Telekom (DT).
True leaders never stop innovating. What all this means for our customers is a path to the AI-driven network that transforms operations and delivers the connected experiences essential to running the digital business. By joining forces with Apstra, Juniper is delivering on our vision of the self-driving network for the modern cloud era.
*Gartner, Market Guide for Network Automation and Orchestration Tools, Josh Chessman and Andrew Lerner, September 14, 2020.
*Gartner, Top 10 Technologies That Will Drive the Future of Infrastructure and Operations, Arun Chandrasekaran and Andrew Lerner, October 29, 2019.
Forward-Looking Statements
This blog contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, could be deemed forward-looking statements. Statements in this blog concerning Juniper Networks’ business, strategy and focus; our agreement to acquire Apstra; the results, savings and improvements made possible by Apstra’s technology, including as integrated with Juniper Networks’ solutions; and our overall future prospects are forward-looking statements that involve a number of uncertainties and risks. Actual results or events could differ materially from those anticipated in those forward-looking statements as a result of several factors, including, without limitation, our ability to close the contemplated acquisition in a timely basis or at all, our ability to integrate the acquired company and its technology, potential benefits of the transaction to Juniper Networks and our customers, the effectiveness of Apstra’s technology, and other factors listed in our most recent report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All statements made in this blog are made only as of the date of this blog. Juniper Networks undertakes no obligation to update the information in this blog in the event facts or circumstances subsequently change after the date of this blog.
