Global CIO Forum, Juniper Networks host summit on the Automated Datacentre in Action

On May 31, Global CIO Forum in association with Juniper Networks successfully hosted VirtualSummit on The Automated Datacentre in Action. The event focussed on how organisations can bring closed-loop automation and assurance to their entire datacentre network.

Juniper’s Apstra Solution empowers IT team to automate the datacentre network from design to deployment and throughout operations. The Apstra solution is intent-based to maximise network performance, scale, and agility. It applies design templates for everything from cabling to provisioning, so your network continues to operate as it was intended. This intent-based system continually validates changes, alerting the operations teams of brownouts or deviations from the original intent.

During the summit, it was demonstrated how Juniper’s Apstra Solution can reduce design and deployment time from months or weeks to days or hours. Speakers included Fons Laudy, Director Sales, Juniper Networks; Islam Mahmoud, Senior Sales Engineer, Juniper Networks and Haitham Saif, Senior System Engineering Manager, META, Juniper Networks.

Below are the highlights from the VirtualSummit:

Fons Laudy, Director Sales, Juniper Networks

During his presentation titled Automated Datacentre, Experience First Networking, Laudy highlighted the 5-step framework of enterprise multi-cloud. It includes the following:

• Device led
• Architecture led
• Operation led
• Business led
• Customer led

Laudy added that there is a strong need of automated NetOps environment. He believes that the agility needs to be in-line with the DevOps team. Laudy also spoke about the datacentre challenges which include:

• Deliver on business intent
• Do more with less
• Trade-off between agility and reliability
• Derive meaningful knowledge

Laudy explained that intent-based networking focuses on the “what” and the “how” part is completely automated. Juniper Apstra principles include:

• A unified intent-based approach
• Graph data model as the secret sauce
• Multi-vendor

Islam Mahmoud, Senior Sales Engineer, Juniper Networks

Mahmoud provided a live demo of Juniper’s Apstra Solution.

Haitham Saif, Senior System Engineering Manager, META, Juniper Networks.

Saif joined the VirtualSummit during the Q&A session. He highlighted the three main priorities of Juniper Networks in 2021 for delivering cloud-ready datacentre:

• Continue to develop the best hardware
• Redesign network operating system
• Management and automation