As Open Networking become the de facto choice of service providers (SPs), system integrators (SIs) nowadays are taking a further important role of supporting their open approach as strategic business partners. To serve its purpose as a global system integrator, NEC focuses on providing professional services powered by an open and robust ecosystem of partners to fulfill each operator’s needs. Among this rich ecosystem, one of the most important partnerships is with Juniper Networks with whom we have been collaborating over 20 years around the world. So it is with great excitement that we announce today our continued, and now expanded, collaboration with Juniper Networks in providing fully integrated IP transport solutions to our joint customers globally.  NEC and Juniper share a common vision of driving 5G open networking adoption, which provides architectural freedom for our customers to deploy best-of-breed multi-vendor solutions that are fully integrated, validated, and orchestrated end-to-end.  This open approach fosters technology innovation and allows our joint customers to achieve their own business success by being able to move faster to deliver new, innovative 5G services that enhance end user experiences.

The two companies, which already share a large footprint of joint customers globally, have a long-running strategic partnership that has been on a healthy growth trajectory since the beginning.  Much of this business success can be attributed to providing our SP customers globally with end-to-end, turn-key automated WAN solutions for their metro, edge and core IP networks.  In fact, earlier this year NEC was recognized as Juniper’s Global Alliance Partner of the Year in 2021 for the third consecutive year, which is a true testament to our joint commitment to excellence and the trust earned with our SP customers.  Looking at the metro segment alone in 2021, we jointly deployed Algeria Telecom’s nationwide 5G-ready IP metro network and simplified the network architecture of Herotel, which is the first segment routing network in Africa. 

NEC and Juniper will not only continue our joint momentum in the metro IP networking area, but it will now accelerate given Juniper’s exciting last announcement earlier this month that describes how its Cloud Metro Innovation will Drive Sustainable Business Growth for Service Providers.  NEC talks with many SPs globally and we often hear about the challenges they face with their traditional metro networks being unable to keep pace with the scale and agility that are required to support new 5G services.  In addition, as metro networks become more complex with the need to support advanced capabilities such as network slicing and increased real-time processing, there is a big ask from SPs to vendors to develop automated solutions that mask this complexity, simplify their operations and are environmentally friendly.  Indeed, these requirements create a big ask of vendors, but they can all be addressed today with Juniper’s “game changing” Cloud Metro solution combined with NEC’s robust, end-to-end network integration and professional services capabilities.  This joint turn-key solution provides SPs with a smooth migration path from their existing traditional metro architectures to a new type of metro architecture that is optimized for sustainable business growth. In the same way that NEC has revolutionized 5G radio networks with its 5G Open RAN solution, Juniper is now looking to revolutionize the metro, which has become the “new edge” where 5G, edge cloud hosting, edge computing, connectivity and service experience converge.

Juniper’s Cloud Metro solution consists of a series of high-performance networking systems, powered by AI-enabled, cloud-delivered automation, specifically designed to build next generation Cloud Metro infrastructure. These systems will allow significantly-reduced natural resource consumption capabilities to help sustain the planet. It will also deliver improved tools and simplified working methods to help sustain over-pressured operations teams, along with embedded service assurance and security capabilities to optimize service experience. The new solutions deliver up to 71% lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by leveraging the latest generation of silicon, industry-leading system design and AI-enabled Device Onboarding-as-a-Service. Zero Trust security is built-in rather than bolted-on, while active service assurance is embedded to deliver proactive service testing, monitoring and remediation.

As a 5G networking leader and experienced global system integrator, NEC is already in the process of testing and validating Juniper’s expanded Cloud Metro portfolio of new software and hardware products. The solution validation will be completed soon in NEC’s 5G Transport Center of Excellence (CoE) labs, which are modern facilities equipped with the latest solutions from various vendors. The labs, which test the latest transport technologies such as Juniper’s Cloud Metro, takes advantage of NEC’s robust engineering and network integration capabilities for certifying end-to-end multi-vendor solutions and services that are powered by automation.  These CoE labs also serve as facilities that enhance NEC’s engineering capabilities, enabling us to provide better services to our customers. As service providers migrate to open networks, we are proud to be able to offer this validation process in these CoE labs as a valuable resource to Juniper and our entire ecosystem of transport partners.

Finally, NEC was honored to be recently invited by Juniper executives to their Cloud Metro Launch Event, which took place at the Aston Martin Lagonda corporate headquarters in the UK on July 1^st, in conjunction with the 2022 British Grand Prix. The entire event was full of enthusiasm with high expectations from the audience for Juniper’s new Cloud Metro strategy to create a new wave of innovation for SPs’ transport networks globally. NEC is proud to have been a part of the event and to be able to further enhance collaboration with Juniper to deliver on the promise of this big wave of Cloud Metro.