I’m thrilled to announce that Juniper Networks has teamed up with Shared_Studios to deliver real-time connections between people around the globe – from refugee camps to universities to public parks to innovation centers. Shared_Studios delivers a unique experience where individuals step inside a “portal” and feel as though they are sharing the same space as someone in an identical portal somewhere else on Earth, through a flawless, life-sized video connection. With 45 portals located in more than 20 countries, Shared_Studios is impacting how we empathize and relate to people and places we might otherwise never know.
Juniper is both a technology provider – delivering secure, reliable connectivity between the global portals – and also a member of the global network of portals. We are excited to be the first long-term corporate partner hosting a Shared Studios portal at our headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.
What is Shared_Studios?
Shared_Studios creates and maintains a network of immersive, audiovisual telecommunications spaces placed in communities around the world. Once inside, you are connected with someone in another, identical space and can talk to that person as if they were in the same room.
Shared_Studios creates these spaces to connect communities that otherwise would never meet. Every site is staffed by a Shared_Studios curator who facilitates dialogues and creates connections to suit the needs of their local community. In this way, a human network helps local communities to access knowledge from around the world and embrace the diversity of human experience. In a fractured world, human beings too often imagine themselves in isolation and in competition. At Shared_Studios, they harness the technology at our fingertips to forge connections between communities that might otherwise never meet.
Shared Studios and Juniper Networks
To kick off our partnership, we are bringing Shared_Studios to NXTWORK , Juniper’s annual customer and partner summit so that our partners and customers can experience the power of Shared_Studios for themselves. We will be hosting a number of sessions where participants can meet with digital transformers, technologists, creators and gamechangers from Lagos, Nigeria to Herat, Afghanistan.
Juniper is at the heart of powering these connections. Shared_Studios leverages best-in-class patented innovations in hardware, software and design, and has chosen Juniper’s SRX300 to provide a stable source of connection and security.
As of today, Juniper’s Sunnyvale portal has seamlessly connected with Shared_Studios’ global network for over 75 hours. To demonstrate just how fast and seamless this connection is, we had Juniper employees attend a mini concert in the Sunnyvale portal a few weeks back where a guitarist in our portal was accompanying a vocalist in Afghanistan. Even though they were halfway around the world, the music and song were played in perfect harmony, in no way interrupted by a lag or faulty connection. It was a spectacular and moving experience that showed us what is possible in terms of real-time connection.
And this is just the beginning. Shared_Studios aims to be in 100 countries by 2022 and we look forward to continuing our relationship and powering more face-to-face connections around the world.