SUNNYVALE, CA–(Marketwired – February 27, 2017) – Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), an industry leader in automated, scalable and secure networks, today announced the availability of a carrier-grade cloud solution that allows the rapid implementation of mobile subscriber service virtual networks functions (VNFs) with the performance, reliability and scale that customers expect. The solution combines Affirmed Networks® Mobile Content Cloud™ virtualized evolved packet core solution (vEPC) with Juniper Networks® Contrail Networking and Netronome® Agilio® SmartNICs to significantly improve performance and efficiency compared to software-only virtual routing solutions.

The growth in mobile data, 5G and IoT has caused mobile operators to be under pressure to enable the benefits of cloud services in their infrastructure, with Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) at the forefront of this architectural shift to the cloud. “Service providers looking to deploy cloud-based mobile subscriber solutions recognize the benefits offered by Network Functions Virtualization, including capital and operational savings, agility and reduced time to launch new services. It is also imperative that carrier-grade performance and reliability is maintained,” said Cliff Grossner, Senior Research Director and Advisor, Cloud & Data Center Research Practice at IHS Markit. “In a recent IHS Markit report, 44% of service provider respondents indicated they would deploy NFV for improved real-time network optimization and 63% said carrier-grade performance was an important barrier that had to be overcome. Operators are signaling that integrated and highly scalable solutions that can scale with demand will get their attention.”¹

Unfortunately, in pursuit of realizing the benefits associated with leveraging NFV, many organizations have been challenged by the limitations of commodity hardware running software not optimized for cloud-scale virtualized environments, resulting in limited throughput and scalability. To address these challenges, Juniper Networks, Affirmed Networks and Netronome together deliver a carrier-grade, highly scalable solution that enables hardware acceleration of cloud-based VNFs for mobile operators. This approach enables the benefits of both SDN and NFV while offering up to six times cost per unit core savings compared to software-only virtual routing solutions. The solution also enables the best of both worlds by combining the flexibility and agility of a software-based solution with the performance of a hardware platform.

The solution includes the following components:

• Juniper Networks® Contrail Networking: A simple, open and agile SDN solution that automates and orchestrates the creation of highly scalable virtual networks that integrate seamlessly with existing physical networks and are easy to manage. Contrail Networking allows customers to avoid expensive vendor lock-in with an open architecture that interoperates with a wide range of hypervisors, orchestration systems and physical networks.
• Affirmed Networks Mobile Content Cloud (MCC): Delivers fully virtualized EPC, probe, analytics, WiFi gateways (TWAG, ePDG), Gi-LAN services, service orchestration and narrowband and wideband IoT services in an integrated platform with native service chaining capabilities that accelerate the creation of new mobile services. The Affirmed MCC helps operators bring new services to market faster, reduces the cost of creating and launching new services and improves overall customer quality of experience. The MCC’s fully virtualized architecture and exceptional scalability simplifies operator planning with right-sized capacity in the network.
• Netronome Agilio SmartNIC: Netronome Agilio CX 10GbE, 25GbE and 40GbE SmartNIC platforms fully and transparently offload virtual switch and router datapath processing for networking functions, such as overlays, security, load balancing and telemetry, enabling compute servers used for server-based networking and cloud computing to save critical CPU cores for application processing while delivering significantly higher performance. Netronome Agilio CX platform features standard low-profile PCIe SmartNICs and software, designed for general-purpose x86 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) rack servers, fitting needed operating system, power and form factor requirements.

Supporting Quotes:

“Juniper is dedicated to helping our customers build highly scalable and reliable networks that utilize automation and intelligence to deliver new services efficiently and economically. Teaming up with Affirmed and Netronome allows us to deliver solutions that enable mobile service offerings, without compromising performance, reliability or scalability. This announcement also further solidifies Contrail Networking as a leading SDN Controller in a carrier-grade cloud platform to empower virtualized network functions as demanding and distributed as the Affirmed Networks Mobile Content Cloud for mobile core services.”

— Paul Obsitnik, vice president of Portfolio Marketing at Juniper Networks

“We are thrilled to continue to work with Juniper Networks to help mobile operators experience the many benefits that virtualized networks provide. By increasing the performance of virtualized applications, operators benefit from significant capital and operational savings, while also gaining a level of performance that far exceeds what is possible in legacy environments.”

— Angela Whiteford, vice president of Product Management and Marketing at Affirmed Networks

“The need to deliver high-performance and efficiency across a wide range of VM and VNF workloads in cloud data centers is fracturing the networking infrastructure into silos and vendor locks, defeating the very purpose of NFV and SDN. Combining Juniper’s Contrail Networking solution, Affirmed Networks Mobile Content Cloud and the Netronome Agilio SmartNIC platform enables a high performance and homogenous NFV infrastructure where VM and VNF workloads can be optimally placed and moved to deliver the needed performance and scale for next generation 4G and 5G applications at the lowest TCO.”

— Sujal Das, chief marketing and strategy officer at Netronome

Additional Information:

Today’s announcement builds on Juniper’s existing technology partnership with Affirmed Networks, announced last year during Mobile World Congress, and supports the partnership’s goal of developing solutions that help service providers transition quickly and efficiently to a virtualized mobile architecture. This announcement also adds to Juniper and Netronome’s strong relationship and commitment to help customers achieve superior performance while leveraging the networking and security features and capabilities necessary to operate their private, hybrid and telco clouds.

To learn more about this joint solution, please visit the Juniper Networks booth (Hall 2, 2J60) and the Affirmed Networks booth (Hall 2, 2D42) at Mobile World Congress 2017 taking place at the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona, February 27 – March 2.