Juniper Unleashes New Networking Products, Boosts Security

Juniper Networks Wednesday unveiled a new line of switches, upgraded routers and made improvements to its physical and virtual security portfolio.

"The announcements today across our routing, switching, security and silicon portfolio reflect a major leap forward in both networking performance and automation," said Juniper CEO Rami Rahim in a statement.

At Juniper's 2015 Innovation Showcase Wednesday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor took the wraps off a new line of spine switches, the QFX10000, to give data centers and cloud deployments of all sizes physical and logical scale, performance and better port density, according to the company.

[Related: Juniper Revamps Partner Program, Teases New Product Lineup]

Juniper did not respond to requests for more information on the new products by press time.

But one Juniper partner who attended the Innovation Showcase had high praise for the company's new road map.

"The new QFX10000 is definitely ground-breaking technology," said Jason Gress, president and co-founder of InterVision Systems Technologies. "[These are] considerable enhancements to what they're currently selling; it's going to be game-changing technology."

The QFX10000 is the first data center switch powered by Juniper's new Q5 chip built for telecommunications and cloud service providers that contains 10-, 40- and 100-Gigabit port density.

"We’ve done a lot with the Juniper QFX line, and we're excited about the 100-Ggigabit offering in the QXF10000," said Jeary Beals, partner development manager at Myriad Supply, a New York-based solution provider and Juniper Elite partner. "The 100-Gig switch is exciting because our customers have been asking about it more and more."

Juniper at the Innovation Showcase also unveiled an enhanced Converged Supercore Architecture based on its PTX core router that the company said will enable better network management by combining Juniper's new custom silicon chip, ExpressPlus, with improved hardware capacity and expanded software-based traffic optimization through the NorthStar Controller, according to the company.

"I think this is going to allow them to provide their customers increased performance, an increase in flexibility, greater manageability. It's giving them an open architecture to do open systems development and enable them to really go stronger in the SDN environment," said Gress.

On the security front, an area that has caused some concern in the Juniper partner community over the past several months, Juniper created AppSecure 2.0 for its virtual firewall vSRX, formerly known as Firefly Perimeter, which the company said will deliver enhanced protection for cloud and hybrid data centers.

Another new security element is Express Path, a services offload capability for the company's SRX5000 Series Services Gateways that plans to boost thoughput, reduce latency and improve scalability -- enabling the firewall to keep pace with high data traffic volumes, according to Juniper.

"It really just shows Juniper's commitment to security," said Beals.

Express Path allows customers to deploy the SRX firewall flexibly and efficiently in their networks for securing both normal and latency -ensitive traffic, according to the release.

"Juniper has really gone to the client and asked what the market is looking for and are now able to deliver," said Beals. "They've always had a steady trickle of announcements when it comes to product lines, but in this instance they've put together a real lineup. It's sort of like a one-two punch of speed and performance that clients are looking for."

PUBLISHED MARCH 11, 2015