Juniper Networks introduces AI-Native Networking Platform

Juniper Networks announced an AI-Native Networking Platform, purpose-built to leverage AI to assure the best end-to-end operator and end-user experiences.

Trained on seven years of insights and data science development, Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform was designed from the ground up to assure that every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset.

Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform unifies all campus, branch and data center networking solutions with a common AI engine and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA). This enables end-to-end AI for IT Operations (AIOps) to be used for deep insight, automated troubleshooting and seamless end-to-end networking assurance, which elevates IT teams’ focus from maintaining basic network connectivity to delivering exceptional and secure end-to-end experiences for students, staff, patients, guests, customers and employees.

The Juniper AI-Native Networking Platform provides the simplest and most assured Day 0/1/2+ operations, resulting in up to 85% lower operational expenditures than traditional solutions, demonstrates the elimination of up to 90 percent of network trouble tickets, 85 percent of IT onsite visits and up to 50 percent reduction in network incident resolution times.

“AI is the biggest technology inflection point since the internet itself, and its ongoing impact on networking cannot be understated. At Juniper, we have seen first-hand how our game changing AIOps has saved thousands of global enterprises significant time and money while delighting the end user with a superior experience. Our AI-Native Networking Platform represents a bold new direction for Juniper, and for our industry. By extending AIOps from the end user all the way to the application, and across every network domain in between, we are taking a big step toward making network outages, trouble tickets and application downtime things of the past,” said Rami Rahim, CEO, Juniper Networks.

Within the new AI-Native Networking Platform, Juniper is introducing several new products that advance the experience-first mission, from more predictable, reliable and measurable IT operations using AI, to simpler high performance data center networks specifically designed for AI training and inference.

AI for Networking: Going deeper and wider with Marvis VNA

The new AI-Native Networking Platform includes two new enhancements to Marvis, the only AI-Native VNA in the industry driven by Mist AI, with proactive recommendations and self-driving operations plus a conversation interface (using GenAI for some use cases). With the following new capabilities, Juniper customers and partners get even more automation and insight:

Marvis Minis: the only AI-Native Networking Digital Experience Twin, uses Mist AI to proactively simulate user connections to instantly validate network configurations and find/detect problems without users being present. Minis simulates end user/client/device/app traffic to learn the network configuration via unsupervised machine learning and to proactively highlight network issues. Data from Minis is continuously fed back into the Mist AI engine, providing an additional source of insight for the best AIOps responses.

No manual configuration is required, as Minis is always on and can be deployed automatically during periods of low network usage (e.g. at midnight on weekends) or via trigger events (e.g. after a network configuration change). Also, unlike conventional digital twinning solutions and synthetic testing, Marvis Minis integrates directly with the network, eliminating manual monitoring and analysis via external sensors, clients and applications.

Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) for the data center: Juniper is introducing the first and only AI-Native VNA for the data center, delivering the best insight throughout the entire data center lifecycle across any vendor’s hardware. For example, issues with data center cabling, configuration and connectivity from any vendor’s hardware are surfaced in the Marvis Actions UI (from Juniper Apstra) with suggested proactive actions. Additionally, the Marvis conversational interface (CI) allows IT teams to pose direct queries and get simple, seamless insight into the data center product documentation and knowledgebase using GenAI.

Data center actions are shown in a single UI alongside similar Marvis actions for wired access, wireless access and secure SD-WAN. In addition, the same Marvis CI is used for generative knowledge base queries across all Juniper products. For the first time ever, Juniper customers have a single VNA for end-to-end visibility and assurance across all enterprise domains.

Networking for AI: High performing and scalable networks for AI training and inference

Juniper is expanding its AI Data Center solution, which is the fastest and most flexible way to deploy high performing AI training and inference clusters, and the simplest to operate with limited IT resources. The Juniper solution consists of a spine-leaf data center architecture with a foundation of QFX switches and PTX routers operated by Juniper Apstra, the only multivendor solution for DC fabric management, automation and assurance.

With unique intent-based operations via Apstra, the new Marvis VNA for data center and validated AI designs, Juniper takes much of the complexity out of AI Data Center networking design, deployment and troubleshooting, allowing customers to do more with fewer IT resources. The solution also delivers unsurpassed flexibility to customers, avoiding vendor lock-in with silicon diversity, multivendor switch management and a commitment to open, standards-based Ethernet fabrics.

Building upon Juniper’s AI Data Center architectural advantages, the company is announcing the following new products and capabilities to drive even more speed, efficiency and scale:

• Juniper Apstra has been expanded to provide faster and more efficient processing of AI/ML traffic over Ethernet, including congestion management, load balancing and flow control.
• New Express 5 silicon-based PTX routers and line cards with the promise of industry-leading performance and energy-efficient sustainability to enable the necessary massive scale with high-density 800GE capacity.
• A new QFX switch provides 2X the capacity of the previous generation and is the first announced data center switch from an Original Equipment Manufacturer using the most advanced Broadcom Tomahawk 5 silicon for 800GE.
• Both the new PTX and QFX platforms support high 800GE port density and the necessary AI infrastructure protocols, including RDMA over Ethernet (RoCE v2) for power-efficient and scalable AI Data Center networking.

Sustainability considerations

The AI-Native Networking Platform exceeds sustainability requirements without sacrificing performance and security. Its AIOps enables fast and remote troubleshooting, significantly cutting inter-site travel by 85 percent in certain instances. Furthermore, it features power-efficient hardware which minimizes energy consumption and is modularly built to make repairs easier and prolong product life.

“Our IT team used to spend hours troubleshooting network issues. Juniper’s AI-native Networking Platform changed everything. With its AI-powered insights from Marvis and automation, we’ve seen a 90 percent reduction in wireless-related issues reported by employees and a significant reduction to our mean time to resolution of issues, freeing up our team to focus on more strategic initiatives. Now, with Marvis Minis, we will be able to proactively find and resolve issues before they impact our user experience. Another amazing benefit is that Marvis Minis is fully integrated into our existing Marvis VNA subscription; there’s no need for additional hardware or software. It’s a game-changer for our network operations,” said Sajeev Nair, Senior Director Design & Build Engineering, ServiceNow.

“Juniper’s AI-Native Platform provides comprehensive solutions for organizations seeking to transition from reactive to proactive and even predictive network troubleshooting and management. The combination of proven AIOps and the addition of synthetic testing enables highly available and optimized network environments. Juniper is extending its AI capabilities to the data center by coupling Marvis VNA with Apstra so it can provide end-to-end context and simplified use leveraging conversational AI interfaces. Additionally, Juniper’s AI-native solutions and switches can be applied to power back end GenAI network infrastructure. Organizations can take advantage of Juniper’s Validated Solutions to accelerate adoption and time to value of these GenAI environments,” said Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.