Juniper Networks Upgrades its Telco Cloud Platform

Juniper Networks has announced enhancements to its Contrail Cloud integrated telco cloud platform to help service providers mitigate the challenges in building and operating distributed and scalable clouds.

These updates, including integration of OpenStack Platform and Ceph Storage from leading open source solutions provider Red Hat, built-in AppFormix automation and visibility, pre-validated virtual network functions (VNFs) and new end-to-end support services, give carriers a far simpler path to delivering business, IoT and mobile services in the cloud.

Juniper has also introduced an end-to-end services offering to build and operate the cloud infrastructure for customers, including 24/7 solution support, and high-touch services to ensure expert application and adoption of Contrail Cloud.

Some of the world’s largest service providers have already proven that leveraging cloud architectures to offer business and mobility services can yield immense benefits, including service agility and speed of innovation, as well as considerably lower risk and costs.

However, the road to a distributed, scalable and always-available cloud is paved with operational challenges. Tedious procurement processes, complexities in building clouds, integration and interop, coordinating support across multiple vendors, and IT skills gaps in managing carrier-grade service level agreements (SLAs) can all complicate the journey.

In a poll among Juniper customers, the company found respondents said “lack of visibility for all parts of cloud networks” is their top challenge in migrating to the cloud (nearly 40% ranked it No. 1); operational complexity ranked second; skills gaps among engineers third and rip-and-replace costs came in fourth.

More than half (55%) of respondents indicated they are using two or more vendors in the network, which can add operational complexity.

Contrail Cloud is designed to ease the process of deploying the telco cloud through simplifying the underlying Linux distribution with Red Hat, gleaning network insight with AppFormix, clearing the traditionally difficult task of validating VNFs by pre-qualifying, and adding end-to-end support services to smooth implementation.

Operators can use this integrated solution to easily navigate the complexities of cloud deployments and operations with improved performance and scale, and service SLAs.