News

Juniper Networks Integrates with 'Software for Open Networking in the Cloud' Platform

• By David Ramel
• 03/14/2019

Juniper Networks, known for software-defined networking (SDN) and other networking offerings, today announced the native integration of its platform with Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC).

SONiC, developed by Microsoft, is an open source project now under the direction of the Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation. Microsoft described it as "a collection of networking software components required to have a fully functional L3 device. It is designed meet the requirements of a cloud data center."

Juniper, describing SONiC as a growing ecosystem of hardware and software partners that centrally manages switching platforms and software components, highlighted its SDN-related characteristics such as programmability and the decoupling of integrated components and software in order to provide customers more choice and flexibility.

Juniper exec Manoj Leelanivas said the integration of the Juniper platform with SONiC provides another datacenter architecture option for hyperscale datacenter customers.

The company specifically summarized the reported benefits of Juniper/SONiC integration:

• Open programmability: Allows for the rapid integration, agility and flexibility necessary for enterprise end users looking to swiftly adapt to market changes.
• Disaggregation: Highly modular architecture decouples integrated components and software, thereby offering customers the ultimate freedom of choice and flexibility.
• Automation: Network operations have always been a tedious and repetitive process. Combining the power of open programmability and disaggregation, Juniper streamlines network diagnostics, automates complex workflows and optimizes network infrastructure operation.
• Broad ecosystem: Native SONiC integration will provide the broad networking community and cloud providers with the latest routing, switching and analytic solutions from Juniper.

"The integration of Juniper's platforms with SONiC shows the company's commitment to open networking and is an important step in our mission to revolutionize networking for today and into the future," Yousef Khalidi, CVP, Azure Networking, Microsoft, said in a statement today. "Customers will be able to take advantage of this simplified and automated switch management platform, enhanced by rich routing and deep telemetry innovations."