Juniper Networks unveils first blueprint for accelerating AI-native platform

In January 2024, Juniper Networks unveiled “the industry’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-native networking platform”, purpose-built to take advantage of AI to provide end-to-end operator and end-user experiences. Now, the company has upped its offer with what it calls a “unique” blueprint for AI-native acceleration.

Explaining the reasons for the enhancement, Juniper noted that the complexity of today’s distributed IT and application environments is matched only by what it described as “relentless” demands and high expectations of them from users and business leaders.

This, the company added, pressures CIOs to ensure that the network can deliver consistently excellent experiences across multiple domains, which are closely tied to key business goals. While it recognised that AIOps is highly effective in enabling exceptional network experiences, Juniper argues that many organisations remain uncertain about how to tap into the value of AI, confused and distracted by unproven claims and market hype.

To help mitigate this uncertainty, Juniper’s Blueprint for AI-Native Acceleration is intended to simplify how enterprises can streamline, accelerate adoption and reap benefits from its AI-Native Networking Platform across all phases of solution evaluation, design, deployment, adoption and operation.

Benefits of the AI-Native Networking Platform are said to include up to 85% reduction in opex and up to a 90% reduction in network trouble tickets. With the Blueprint for AI-Native Acceleration, Juniper said that customers and partners can reap similar benefits of up to 9x faster deployments.

The new framework is designed for customers and partners to build trust in AI and the cloud and accelerate time-to-value for Juniper’s secure networking portfolio, from campus and branch to datacentre and wide-area networking (WAN). 

It includes free education to ramp knowledge and skills with limited resources; exclusive trial offers to validate the benefits of the AI-Native Networking Platform solutions; flexible licensing to simplify procurement; and support services to expedite deployment and enable optimised ongoing performance.

In addition, Juniper is offering a range of hands-on classes and actionable certifications that help IT practitioners plan and start their AI-Native Networking Platform journey with confidence. These cover key products and technologies such as AIOps, wireless, switching, routing, security, cloud and automation. These Juniper classes are being offered free-of-charge as part of the Blueprint for AI-Native Acceleration.

Licensing options include subscription with various terms, depending upon the product. In addition, there are custom and packaged Enterprise Agreement (EA) options to manage a large number of licenses with staggered deployment on a coterminous basis and network-as-a-service (NaaS) contracts.

Using the Juniper Mist AI Accelerate Service, which provides assistance and expertise to help realise benefits immediately and improve time to value, users can design and deploy solutions for wired, wireless and SD-WAN networks with confidence and speed.

Commenting on how the solutions have been deployed on its campus, Bryan Ward, lead network engineer at Dartmouth College said: “It used to take an engineer and a field technician 30 minutes per AP, on average, to deploy a Wi-Fi network in a building with our prior vendor’s system. 

“Now, with Mist, our technicians alone can install APs on site and have them providing service in about three minutes. Mist’s API, Installer APP and ZTP process have given us the ability to install and upgrade APs, for an over 9x faster deployment, which means a 9x faster value on our investment.”