Customer Success Story
T-Systems taps intent-based networking for cloud-scale IT service delivery
Top businesses in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as well as Fortune 100 businesses rely on T-Systems for expert information communications technology (ICT) services. A subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems is a premier cloud provider in Germany, with services that conform to the country’s strict data privacy laws.
T-Systems modernized its data center networks with Juniper to meet new performance, availability, and scalability requirements for digital transformation and cloud.
Overview
| Company | T-Systems |
| Industry | Service Provider |
| Products used | QFX10002, QFX5100, Juniper Apstra |
| Region | EMEA |
#1
Provider of IT services in Germany
World’s largest provider of hosted SAP solutions
Created large-scale IP fabric across four data centers
Sped up design and deployment of cloud-scale network fabric
The once-invisible data center network becomes strategic
Innovation is essential when solving complex IT problems for some of the biggest companies in the world. To deliver that innovation, T-Systems consolidated 45 data centers around the world to create 11 modern, cloud-scale data centers that could meet customers’ stringent performance and availability expectations.
“We wanted to upgrade our data centers with a state-of-the-art IP fabric/SDN design,” says Thomas Wende, head of data center network engineering at T-Systems. “With a modern data center architecture from Juniper, we can implement automation to provision environments for customers faster.”
Automation and orchestration were key requirements since they would enable T-Systems to provision services to customers and quickly capitalize on new customer requirements like multicloud.
Creating a flexible and automated data center network fabric
“Customers are realizing that added value can come out of network services,” says Robert Semjon, global head of data center network operations at T-Systems. “In the past, nobody was interested in the network. The network was supposed to simply work, like an elevator.”
With digital at the heart of so many customer experiences, the expectations for the once-invisible data center network have dramatically changed. As T-Systems has been on a multi-year journey to consolidate, migrate, modernize, and automate its data centers worldwide to efficiently deliver ICT services to customers, it values having open and flexible infrastructure.
T-Systems relies on a cloud-scale Juniper IP fabric solution for a strong, resilient network foundation in its Houston data center in the U.S. and its Munich, Magdeburg, and Biere data centers in Germany. It uses Juniper QFX Series Switches for its large-scale IP fabric, providing any-to-any connectivity for applications across multiple data center pods.
Automation will empower its data center operators to make network infrastructure changes based on customer requirements faster, more efficiently, and with lower risk. With the Juniper Apstra system, the data center team can speed the design, deployment, and lifecycle management of its IP fabric.
“We saw a huge advantage in using Juniper after the acquisition of Apstra,” says Semjon. “Apstra will simplify and automate our day-to-day network operations.”
Deliver infrastructure services faster and more efficiently
Automation was key to enabling rapid infrastructure service delivery to meet customer expectations for time-to-market.
The QFX Series Switches in T-Systems data centers are ideal for big data, storage, and other bursty applications while enhancing application resiliency.
Apstra’s intent-based network design and operations simplify the design and deployment of the Juniper IP fabric. The data center operations teams can specify the outcomes they want, and then the Apstra software sets up the network and continuously assures that the fabric is running as intended. If problems occur, the same tools are used to avert outages with predictive insights.
With continuous automation and assurance, the risk of human error when making changes to a complex infrastructure can be reduced. Automating day-to-day tasks frees up experts to work with customers to develop forward-thinking solutions.
In the initial phase, Apstra will manage an IP fabric comprised of QFX Series Switches, but the open, multivendor capabilities of Apstra are a powerful advantage. T-Systems plans to use Apstra to manage and automate open-source and other vendors’ switches as well.
Juniper Networks Assists T-Systems in Modernizing Their Data Center
Top businesses in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as well as Fortune 100 businesses rely on T-Systems for expert information communications technology (ICT) services. They are a premier cloud provider in Germany, with services that conform to the country’s strict data privacy laws.
T-Systems modernized its data center networks with Juniper to meet new performance, availability, and scalability requirements for digital transformation and cloud.
The Products
Juniper enables your business to scale elastically while minimizing capital investment through our modern cloud services that span the network and security domains.
Juniper’s automation-led approach to networking simplifies and accelerates WAN and data center planning, design, and operations for more reliable and sustainable network services.
Improve the economics of networking with cloud-grade, high-density ethernet switching across your data center, campus, and branch.
QFX10002
QFX10002 fixed-configuration switches are very dense, highly scalable platforms designed for today’s most demanding data center, campus, and routing environments. They’re loaded with power and functionality, all housed in a compact, 2 U form factor.
QFX5100
The QFX5100 line of top-of-rack 10/40GbE switches for the data center offers low latency, deployment versatility, and rich automation features. These switches provide universal building blocks for industry-standard architectures such as spine-and-leaf fabrics.
Juniper Apstra
Intent-based networking software automates the entire network lifecycle, from design through everyday operations, across multivendor data centers with continuous validation, powerful analytics, and root-cause identification to assure reliability.
Published August 2021