BT Group Transforms its Business Approach with a Cloud Core Network from Juniper Networks

LONDON -- Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), a leader in secure, AI-driven networks, today announced it is supporting BT Group’s ongoing transformation journey towards a highly scalable, automated and robust cloud core infrastructure for business and consumer customers. BT Network Cloud supports diverse network applications across broadband, fixed, mobile and other mission-critical services on a single platform, using Juniper Networks’ high-performance cloud-native solutions and professional services.

With this strategic deployment, BT Network Cloud has now scaled to accommodate multiple key network-centric applications, such as mobile voice and data, broadband authentication and IP voice calls for tens of millions of customers without extra overhead costs. An innovative global technology footprint from Juniper, including infrastructure consolidation and virtualization, along with improved hardware density and power efficiency, reduces space and power requirements in support of a more sustainable infrastructure.

BT Simplifies and Improves Service Quality with Agile Network Cloud

BT Network Cloud enables applications that underpin BT Group's U.K. consumer and business network services. Juniper’s high-performance, high-availability fabric for BT Network Cloud provides extreme robustness and high performance for BT Group’s core applications across a widely distributed user base deployed at multiple locations across the U.K. Moving from dedicated compute platforms for each application to a shared infrastructure conserves and optimizes resources leading to better resource utilization and significantly lower environmental impact.

The provider’s network cloud optimizes service quality and streamlines operational deployment and management of core applications, which enables innovation and agility in delivering new services to market such as enhanced 5G services.

5G Roll Out and Scale to Meet Digital Demand

The introduction of 5G created a unique opportunity for BT Group to transform its core network to ensure it was well-positioned to offer a dynamic range of new services to customers at unprecedented scale. BT Group chose to build a network cloud to provide a common shared platform for core applications, which operate its broadband, fixed and mobile services. BT Group has migrated tens of millions of mobile subscribers and successfully deployed all its mobile application infrastructure on its network cloud.

The goal of the multiyear journey at BT Group was to deploy a state-of-the-art container-based fixed, broadband and mobile core that will boost business agility, operational efficiency, sustainability and meet security compliance.

News Highlights:

-BT uses Juniper for open, software-defined networking (SDN), switching and firewall solutions for its network cloud. The service provider uses Juniper’s SDN platform to automate the creation and management of its OpenStack-based telco cloud. The platform provides hybrid SDN orchestration and centralized control of virtual switching, routing and security. BT is running cloud-native containerized applications and optimizing costs using OpenStack.

-Juniper QFX Series Switches provide the high-performance, high-availability fabric needed to support the BT Network Cloud which has rapidly become the largest container-based cloud infrastructure in the world, and is still growing.

-BT’s cloud-native platform is deployed at multiple locations across the U.K. to form a distributed architecture designed to scale seamlessly alongside demand and to provide services closer to the end user than with traditional, more centralized deployments.

-Juniper collaborated with BT to deliver high-performance, high-availability fabric for BT Network Cloud. BT’s data centers contain over 1,000 Juniper QFX Series Switches and 2,000 Juniper vRouters. The switches connect all mission-critical application servers to the core network. The SDN platform is deployed on the servers to provide virtualized routing capability to connect workloads across BT’s network securely.

-Juniper vSRX Virtual Firewalls protect and secure the data center traffic. vSRX provides a network address translation capability which was not possible for one of BT’s application providers to deliver in software.

-BT Group selected Juniper for its engineering excellence and ability to provide an end-to-end network solution including hardware, software and tools that can integrate reliably with the complete cloud stack.

-By leveraging Juniper’s professional services, BT has successfully completed the project on time and ensured that the challenging service level, availability and performance targets of BT’s applications are met.

Supporting Quotes:

“Telecoms services have become central to business and consumer lives and as the U.K.’s national network provider, BT Group has a particular responsibility to lead from the front to deliver the cloud-native, sustainable digital services of the future. Our work with partners such as Juniper is helping to ensure that our critical infrastructure, network and services are agile, secure and resilient for the long term. Our millions of customers can remain confident in the experience-led integrity of the everyday and exceptional digital services on which they rely.”

- Howard Watson, Chief Security and Networks Officer, BT Group

“We are delighted that Juniper’s cloud-native networking solutions and comprehensive professional services were selected as the cornerstone of the BT Network Cloud. BT can respond to the demands of the next chapter of digital transformation at scale whilst leveraging the power of the network to enable new digital services for BT’s customers, fully supported by a cloud-native architecture enabling security, automation, scale and agility.”

- Raj Yavatkar, Chief Technology Officer, Juniper Networks