Juniper is rebuilding its enterprise SD-WAN strategy around the Session-Smart Router (SSR) from 128 Technology. Juniper acquired 128 Technology in October 2020 for nearly half a billion dollars.
The SSR is a whitebox router that ties in with a controller and a clever approach to routing that directs traffic based on application sessions rather than individual packets. (There’s a lot going on with Session-Smart Routing, so if you want the technical details, start here.)
Among its networking competitors, Juniper has been an also-ran when it comes to enterprise SD-WAN. The company first tried its hand with Contrail Service Orchestration (CSO), which is aimed primarily at service providers. The idea was that service providers could use CSO to build and sell SD-WAN services to their customers.
As a vendor that caters to the service provider and telco markets, you could see why Juniper might prefer this approach. Unfortunately, many customers see SD-WAN as an opportunity to escape from their service providers—a fatal flaw in Juniper’s strategy.
Juniper also has a CSO option for the enterprise, but whatever its technical and operational merits might be, it hasn’t gotten much traction. In the meantime, the SD-WAN market has continued to heat up, with competitors grabbing market share and acquiring SD-WAN vendors.
A Mist Opportunity
With the Session-Smart Router now firmly in hand, Juniper hopes to leap from somewhere near the back of the SD-WAN pack to somewhere near the front by incorporating the SSR into the AIOps Promised Land of Mist.
On February 24th, Juniper announced that the Session Smart Router will be integrated into Juniper’s WAN Assurance program. SSRs will stream telemetry into the Mist AI cloud, where algorithms analyze and process reams of data to provide visibility into the user experience and network performance, automatically enforce customer-defined service levels, and spot anomalies that could indicate larger problems brewing.
Network engineers can also use Juniper’s Marvis virtual assistant to troubleshoot SD-WAN issues using natural-language queries, such as “What went wrong with Erica’s Microsoft Teams call this morning?”
Juniper is staking its enterprise identity and value proposition around Mist AI. By tying SSR so quickly into Mist (the 128 Technology acquisition officially closed just four months ago), Juniper has put its imprimatur on SSR as its SD-WAN champion.
I confirmed this in an interview with Jeff Aaron, VP Enterprise Marketing; and Sue Johnston, VP/GM at Juniper Networks.
Jeff Aaron said “128 Technology is the primary platform we’re going to push for the enterprise. CSO customers will also have a path forward to be brought into the Mist Cloud and Mist AI, but our primary push is around the 128 Technology solution.”
More To Come For SSR
Juniper has additional plans for the Session-Smart Routing technology that underpin’s 128 Technology’s products. For one, while you have to buy the Session Smart Router as a whitebox or virtual appliance today, Juniper plans to make it available on its SRX gateways in the future.
Many SD-WAN vendors bundle multiple capabilities into their branch devices, including SD-WAN connectivity, routing, firewalling, and other security functions. At the same time, SD-WAN customers often retire branch routers and firewalls in favor of a multi-function SD-WAN appliance, so getting SSR onto SRX makes good sense.
Looking ahead, Session-Smart Routing can also be applied to other use cases including DCI and multi-cloud connectivity.
For now, however, SSR is Juniper’s new strategy for enterprise SD-WAN. Let’s see what they can do with it.
