Ericsson and Juniper Networks partnership gains momentum with joint transport solutions

February 20, 2019 at 12:00 AM CST: Since announcing a deepened partnership in September 2018, Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) and Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) have secured more than 20 new customers worldwide. The two companies are today unveiling further enhancements to their joint 5G transport network and security solutions to meet increasing demand.

Service providers who are looking to deploy 5G-ready networks are turning to the combined Ericsson and Juniper portfolios to deliver the required transport infrastructure, operations and service delivery solutions they need that remove complexity and ensure ease-of-use.

Per Narvinger, Head of Product Area Networks, Ericsson, says: “The positive market response to our expanded partnership with Juniper is a testimony to the strength of our joint end-to-end transport solutions. We hope to sustain this momentum by further enhancing our leading, high-performance transport portfolio to ensure that next-generation networks continue to benefit our customers.”

Manoj Leelanivas, Chief Product Officer, Juniper Networks, says: “By integrating complementary portfolios and technologies, Juniper Networks and Ericsson continue to partner and further develop end-to-end transport solutions for the 5G era – solutions that give service providers greater flexibility, performance, security and automation.”

With the evolution of Ericsson’s solution for network slicing, Juniper’s SDN controller, NorthStar, is interworking with Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration , providing seamless control from the cell site to the packet core network – including the data center gateway. This allows automation and integration of connectivity services in the transport domain into an end-to-end network slice. With this solution, Ericsson’s Wide Area Network Orchestrator (WANO) acts as a hierarchical SDN controller in charge of configuring connectivity services.

Transport orchestration added to Ericsson’s network slicing solution provides the network slice with guaranteed bandwidth and key performance indicators, such as latency. Slicing in the transport domain is also enhanced by combining soft network slicing through Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration and hard network slicing through Junos node slicing on Juniper’s MX Series portfolio. In combination with Ericsson Radio System , this joint solution will enable an end-to-end network slice on a shared infrastructure that can be secure, optimized and isolated.

[Another enhancement is in the security area, where solutions from Juniper are being integrated into the Ericsson RAN offerings. In addition to the newly announced 5G High Layer vRAN, Ericsson security functionality has been complemented with Juniper SRX and vSRX gateway products as the IPSec security solution to elevate and extend the security framework across the network .

Juniper PTX, MX and SRX will be natively integrated into Ericsson Security Manager to reduce time-to-market by automating hardening and facilitating monitoring and compliance of security policies.

Khanungdej Triratupathum, Chief Technology Officer, TrueMove, says: “TrueMove is committed to providing a superior experience for our mobile users with a constant evolution of our services. We are working toward the virtualization of several components of the Mobile Core. The Ericsson and Juniper Networks partnership allows us to take advantage of an integrated best-of-breed solution by running Ericsson virtual network functions (VNFs) and Ericsson Network Functions Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) with the Juniper MX series platform as our data-center gateway.”

Mikko Kannisto, Director of Transmission Networks, DNA, says: “Finland is a unique market where most customers use mobile broadband as their primary broadband service, and with data traffic increasing 33 percent year-over-year. Strengthening our core network to not only meet the growing demands of our customers today – and allowing us the flexibility to prepare for 5G – has been a priority for DNA. Juniper Networks and Ericsson have implemented renewed DNA core network that supports 5G transport capacity, boosting our 5G readiness.”

According to mobile operator Jazz, as network demands increase, the company has to ensure that the network they build today will allow them to manage the end-user experience with excellence, especially as they move toward a 4G advanced era and beyond. The joint solutions from Ericsson and Juniper Networks provide seamless connectivity from radio cell site to internet gateway with best-in-class technology, while delivering a future-proof infrastructure to enable a great end-user experience.

As part of the partnership , Juniper will continue to use Ericsson’s go-to-market capabilities for mobile opportunities and Ericsson will include Juniper’s solutions for edge, core, security and network slicing as part of its end-to-end 5G transport portfolio.