Juniper Networks, Canonical Partner on OpenStack-Based Cloud Solutions for Telecoms

Juniper Networks and Canonical, the provider of services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise, have announced an expansion of their global partnership with a co-developed carrier-grade, OpenStack software solution that will enable service providers to virtualize core networks and network functions for increased performance, scale and reliability.

As part of this partnership, Juniper will also provide complete service support for Canonical’s Ubuntu Server operating system (OS) and Ubuntu OpenStack as part of Juniper NetworksContrail Cloud.

Service providers are working to profitably address growing end-user demand for data capacity while more quickly delivering new, innovative services to subscribers. To accomplish this, carriers are continually looking to cloud platforms to make their infrastructure more agile and automated to support these goals.

By combining Juniper Networks’ expertise in cloud network offerings for telecommunications customers with Canonical’s OpenStack and open source leadership, Canonical and Juniper are providing open, scalable, cost-effective, and carrier-grade cloud solutions on which carriers can build a virtualized IP platform and support network functions virtualization (NFV).

OpenStack has emerged as a preferred open-source cloud management platform based on its openness, interoperability, flexibility and large highly active community of users, developers and vendors. It has also established itself as the platform of choice for NFV workloads. According to the most recent OpenStack Foundation global survey, Ubuntu is the most popular host and guest operating system for OpenStack, with more than half of all OpenStack instances running Ubuntu, and 70 percent of the Public Cloud Guest operating system market.

Contrail Networking’s connection with Ubuntu Server OS and Ubuntu OpenStack as the default platform for cloud deployments began with Juniper Networks and the OpenContrail project participating in Canonical’s OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL), an integration lab in which Canonical tests its cloud partners’ products in Ubuntu OpenStack configurations, for automated testing of Contrail with Ubuntu OpenStack. The addition of the joint carrier-grade OpenStack solution will leverage and expand on OIL to provide enhanced testing to ensure the solution meets the demanding needs of carriers.

“Juniper Networks firmly believes that open source and open standards will continue to drive greater levels of innovation and is pleased to partner with Canonical to help drive faster adoption of the cloud for telecommunication organizations. Our jointly developed converged Ubuntu and Juniper OpenStack solution will help deliver greater performance, scalability and reliability at lower costs.” said, Ankur Singla, corporate vice president and general manager, cloud software, Juniper Networks.

“Juniper and Canonical are leading the OpenStack innovation agenda by jointly developing a virtualization solution that will help service providers accelerate cloud deployments for greater agility. Juniper’s Contrail addresses the carrier-class issues of virtualized environments and accelerates elastic service delivery across multi-tenant, hybrid cloud OpenStack deployments across a multi-vendor ecosystem. By combining Juniper’s open network solutions and leadership in the telecommunications industry with Canonical’s leadership in OpenStack and scale-out open source, we will jointly be able to deliver cloud solutions that enable carriers to meet their network modernization challenges.” Explained,
John Zannos, vice president, cloud channels and alliances, Canonical.