Juniper Paragon Automation: Executive Interview

00:00 [Music]

00:06 hello everyone and thanks for

00:08 uh joining us today my name is sally

00:10 baymond and i am vice president of

00:12 marketing at juniper networks

00:14 and joining me today is brendan gibbs

00:17 brendan heads up

00:18 our automated one solutions business

00:21 brendan great to see you today

00:23 hi sally how are you doing very good

00:25 thank you so brandon let's start

00:27 with service experience so service

00:30 experience has become

00:32 a top strategic priority for network

00:35 operators globally

00:36 and actually not just service providers

00:38 but also

00:40 enterprise i.t organizations and even

00:42 cloud providers

00:44 why has service experience become so

00:46 important

00:47 and why now more than ever before you

00:50 know i'm

00:51 talking to you now from my house and the

00:54 reason for that is of course the global

00:55 coveted pandemic and i think covet has

00:58 really

00:59 shifted everything in our lives online

01:01 it's made the network

01:02 the focus of everything everything we do

01:05 for work play

01:06 you know family everything for life is

01:09 done on networks now

01:10 and so i think demands on networks are

01:12 even more critical than ever because

01:13 it's the only way that we communicate

01:15 it's the only way that we can connect

01:17 and as a result the services that we

01:19 utilize

01:20 just are under constant scrutiny and

01:23 it's our only way that we can actually

01:25 like i said to communicate with each

01:26 other so

01:28 i think service experience is paramount

01:30 for service providers it's paramount for

01:32 end users and it's something that

01:34 we really need to put at the center

01:36 instead of networks it really needs to

01:38 be around the services on top of the

01:39 networks

01:40 yeah i love it thank you brandon and um

01:42 so obviously you know at juniper

01:44 we we believe that delivering an assured

01:46 experience is one of the top

01:48 you know requirements or most important

01:50 requirements for network operators

01:52 that are delivering services and

01:53 applications to end users

01:55 and and that includes an assured

01:57 experience

01:59 an assured operations experience for

02:01 network operators

02:02 as well as an assured service experience

02:04 for those end users

02:06 um we're referring to that now as

02:08 experience first networking

02:11 can you connect the dots for us between

02:13 automation and how that ties into

02:16 experience first networking

02:18 you know the the question that always

02:20 comes to my mind is how do you know

02:22 if you're a service provider how do you

02:23 know that your server your end users

02:26 are actually able to use your service

02:28 you know and what you

02:29 don't want to do is have a bunch of

02:31 pissed off customers or people flooding

02:33 your helpline

02:34 if you don't know about it first so the

02:36 fundamental question is how do you know

02:38 that the service is up

02:39 how do you know that your customers are

02:41 having just a delightful

02:44 service experience if you don't have an

02:47 ability to

02:48 monitor the service to assure that the

02:50 service is up

02:51 with active checking then you really

02:54 don't know and you're at the

02:55 the you know vagaries of chance you're

02:58 left to

02:59 you know whatever might happen so i

03:01 fundamentally think that

03:02 if service experience is critical and we

03:05 believe it is and it's more critical

03:06 than ever and if the quality of that

03:09 experience is critical so their

03:10 customers stick with you

03:12 because the network is even more

03:14 important to their lives than ever

03:16 then assuring that service availability

03:19 and quality

03:20 is paramount and that means assuring the

03:22 service end-to-end

03:24 that means having linkage of the service

03:26 to the underlying

03:27 network infrastructure and assuring all

03:29 of that networking

03:30 uh yourself so i think without

03:33 service assurance frankly active service

03:36 assurance

03:37 you can't guarantee and you don't have

03:39 any sort of ability to answer that

03:41 fundamental question of

03:42 how do you know and if you don't know

03:44 you you can't ensure

03:46 your customers are happy i love it thank

03:49 you

03:49 thanks brian so so let's talk now about

03:52 juniper's new

03:52 paragon automation portfolio um

03:56 how does it you know help network

03:58 operators not only just differentiate

04:00 themselves

04:01 but also drive some efficiencies in

04:03 terms of operational efficiencies

04:06 absolutely sally you know peregrine has

04:08 a number of components

04:09 we've crafted it around the operator

04:12 life cycle

04:13 for their end-to-end workflow from

04:15 planning and design to online

04:17 configuration

04:18 to active service assurance and

04:20 ultimately to

04:21 operating and analyzing the network

04:23 infrastructure

04:24 so we've got a number of specific

04:26 automation tools some of which include

04:28 paragon planner and pathfinder which

04:31 offer

04:32 a cloud-based mechanism for providers to

04:34 have an

04:35 offline source of truth and planning and

04:37 design function

04:38 as well as an offline control function

04:41 for say segment routing control

04:44 for path finding of lsps and other mpls

04:47 paths through the network

04:49 we also offer an ability to offer end to

04:51 end service provisioning from the cloud

04:53 so this is a great model where uh

04:56 customers can dramatically ease

04:58 their their their costs by simply

05:01 seriously reducing the

05:03 prospect of human error with the ability

05:05 to

05:06 templatize their entire network in data

05:08 models

05:09 multi-vendor open standard based

05:12 yang data models based on open config

05:15 what they can do is they can

05:16 craft a visual workflow of how a service

05:19 model should be deployed where you can

05:21 have

05:22 pre-checks deployment post checks and

05:25 you know updating service ticketing

05:27 systems etc

05:28 it really can give operators a

05:30 significant

05:31 acceleration of how rapidly they're able

05:33 to roll out software upgrades

05:35 how much they're able to improve the

05:37 accuracy

05:38 um and ultimately treat their network

05:41 as code by by you know instantiating all

05:44 that in a very easy to use multi-vendor

05:47 config model

05:48 our third thing we've done is we've

05:49 introduced paragon active assurance

05:52 which came from our acquisition of net

05:54 rounds

05:55 and what active assurance does is it it

05:57 operates

05:59 at the service layer and it monitors the

06:01 end-to-end

06:02 service characteristics whether it be

06:05 jitter

06:06 whether it be latency whether it be

06:08 basic availability

06:10 and it can zoom in to pinpoint any

06:11 particular problems whether it be

06:13 at an end point whether it be a failed

06:16 you know transit path

06:17 whether it be some you know extra

06:18 latency in a public cloud

06:21 giving that extra insights to service

06:23 characteristics and service quality

06:26 is so important for operators because it

06:28 fundamentally helps them identify

06:30 first of all as the service is up at all

06:33 or and if the service is up is are there

06:36 end users actually having good quality

06:38 or not

06:38 so active assurance really speaks to

06:41 helping operators

06:42 first of all deliver a delightful

06:45 quality of experience to their own

06:46 customers but ultimately reduce their

06:48 own costs to operate that service as

06:50 well

06:51 and then another aspect of the the

06:53 peregrine portfolio is frankly paragon

06:55 insights

06:56 where we're able to take the reams of

06:59 data that we're ingesting from the

07:00 network whether it be from streaming

07:02 telemetry

07:03 off of all of a routed infrastructure or

07:05 the service layer data insights from

07:07 paragon active assurance

07:09 and pass that into an analytics engine

07:11 for an ai and ml

07:12 parsing of the data to glean insights

07:15 and once you've actually

07:16 extracted useful data from the massive

07:19 influx of data

07:21 you're able to then take actions upon it

07:23 and so now you start having

07:24 that 360 degree feedback loop where

07:27 operators are

07:28 able to better remediate problems when

07:31 they arise

07:32 they've got accelerated route time to

07:35 resolve those problems

07:36 and you have a means by which you can

07:38 now optimize your network infrastructure

07:40 based upon that analyzed data

07:41 and the ai and ml insights so paragon

07:45 really represents a means by ultimately

07:47 customers can

07:48 deliver that end-to-end assured service

07:51 reducing their costs reducing the the

07:53 impact of human

07:54 error and you know ultimately you know

07:57 making the the network far more easy to

07:59 operate for themselves

08:00 yeah exciting stuff so so tell me um how

08:04 um what differentiates paragon

08:07 automation from some of the other

08:09 automated one solutions that are on the

08:11 market today

08:12 well you know i think a lot of the

08:14 alternates that

08:16 really exist in the market are old so

08:18 one of the things that i said about

08:19 paragon is it's cloud first

08:21 it's cloud delivered some of the

08:24 automation technologies that exist

08:26 from alternate suppliers were delivered

08:28 before the iphone ever shipped

08:30 i mean we're talking not cloud-based

08:32 like these things didn't even

08:34 know what 3g 4g 5g networks were when

08:38 they were delivered

08:39 so what we've done with paragon is

08:41 delivered a fundamentally net new

08:44 architecture that is microservice based

08:46 and it's cloud delivered and what that

08:48 allows

08:48 operators to do is to have very rapid

08:51 introduction

08:52 of these new services the new automation

08:53 tools it delivers in a very

08:56 scalable fashion because it's cloud

08:58 hosted so now you're able to leverage

08:59 the the base kubernetes based scaling

09:02 infrastructure

09:03 um and it's very easy to use so that is

09:06 a key differentiator for us where we

09:08 have the ability to to

09:09 seamlessly scale as operators need and

09:11 deploy as

09:13 they might require whether it's in a

09:14 public cloud offered as a sas offer or

09:16 software as a service

09:18 or it's on their own private cloud on

09:19 their own premise or a combination

09:22 we offer that flexibility and alternate

09:24 options from

09:25 you know alternate suppliers don't even

09:27 have that as a choice

09:29 so that's one option i think another

09:31 option is

09:32 frankly we're unique in the market to

09:34 have the ability to offer active

09:36 service assurance we got this with our

09:38 friends from netron's which is a company

09:40 that we acquired recently

09:42 netron's is the global leader in active

09:44 service assurance and the reason i'm

09:46 focusing so much on the word

09:47 active is it because netron's with its

09:51 cloud-hosted control center and test

09:53 agents distributed throughout the

09:55 networking infrastructure

09:56 operates at the service layer and it

09:59 essentially mimics

10:00 an experience of an end user and so

10:03 without

10:04 actively testing to see whether a

10:06 service is available

10:07 it's analogous to to say like a a phone

10:10 call

10:11 if you're passively you know trying to

10:13 monitor a phone number phone network for

10:15 voice services

10:16 that's looking like looking at a

10:18 telephone sitting on your desk and

10:19 saying

10:20 i think it works that's my phone service

10:22 the difference is an active service

10:24 would be picking up the phone

10:25 making a call and that's what net rounds

10:27 with the uh you know the acquisition

10:29 that our friends from that company

10:30 brings to us with paragon active

10:32 assurance

10:33 it gives us that ability to actively

10:35 interrogate and mimic

10:36 a service to deliver you know constant

10:39 uh knowledge of what that um what that

10:42 service is in

10:43 and the third thing i would highlight is

10:45 service provisioning this is another key

10:47 area for us

10:48 where alternate companies have solutions

10:51 that again are not cloud-based

10:53 um and they don't have an integrated

10:55 workflow to be able to build an

10:57 end-to-end service provisioning model

10:59 for services and the networks

11:00 what you have is from alternate

11:02 suppliers requirements to take multiple

11:04 software tools

11:05 to have some things fundamentally on

11:07 premise something that's fundamentally

11:09 highly manual and difficult to configure

11:12 and that's contrasted with our paragon

11:15 software architecture and software tools

11:17 where we have the ability to deliver a

11:20 visual workflow build

11:22 a end-to-end service construct that's

11:24 very easy to craft

11:25 with a visual workflow builder and

11:27 service provisioning template builder

11:29 and deploy all that from the cloud so

11:31 you could not have a larger difference

11:33 between what juniper is offering whether

11:35 it's paragon

11:36 cloud delivered suite and the offline

11:38 old world

11:39 network management tools recast as

11:41 so-called automation

11:43 that's fantastic well listen thank you

11:45 brandon thanks for your time

11:47 uh thanks for thank you to everyone

11:49 who's uh

11:50 viewing today i do want to just uh say a

11:53 couple of quick things if you want to

11:55 learn more

11:56 about paragon automation and juniper's

11:59 automation solutions

12:01 i definitely want to encourage you to go

12:02 to juniper.net

12:04 backslash paragon automation

12:07 register there and you can access demos

12:10 you can get

12:11 product updates and a wealth of more

12:14 wealth more information on the paragon

12:17 automation suite

12:18 so thank you and thanks everyone for

12:20 your time today thank you

12:24 [Music]

12:33 you