Juniper Networks scored a big SD-WAN victory. The company announced that Vodafone selected its Contrail SD-WAN to be included in the operator’s portfolio of enterprise cloud-based services that it calls its Ready Network.
Vodafone’s Ready Network will use Juniper’s universal customer premises equipment (uCPE), its self-service portal, its Contrail Service Orchestrator, and its NFX Series Network Services Platform.
Juniper’s uCPE is important because it can deliver multiple virtual network functions (VNFs). This means that Vodofone customers can use the same device to deploy additional VNFs without needing to install additional physical appliances or dispatch humans on-site to provision services.
In addition, Juniper’s self-service portal can handle provisioning and management of WAN services as well as visibility and analysis of network performance. The portal also provides customers with bandwidth-on-demand, which means they can increase or decrease their bandwidth in response to changes in traffic and business requirements.
Vodafone said that one of the reasons it selected Juniper’s SD-WAN was because of its Contrail Service Orchestrator, which the service provider is using to oversee parts of its SD-WAN infrastructure and to provide its customers with a customized self-service portal.
Juniper said that its Contrail Service Orchestrator can provide security across hybrid WAN connections, including IPSec, MPLS, broadband, and LTE.
Juniper’s NFX Series Network Services Platform, which Vodafone is also using, integrates with Contrail and can be deployed at each customer location to provide firewall protection and advanced cloud-based threat protection.
Juniper has been relatively quiet about its SD-WAN business. However, in February it announced that Alaskan operator GCI was deploying the company’s Contrail SD-WAN as part of the carrier’s virtual managed service platform, CloudFlex SD-WAN.
Today’s Vodafone news is by far the company’s largest service provider SD-WAN deal to date. Juniper CEO Rami Rahim has said that the company’s strategy is to focus on helping its service provider customers deliver SD-WAN.