Brendan Gibbs, VP, Automated WAN Solutions, Juniper Networks

Networking for the Experience-First Era | Juniper Global Summit

Global Summit 2021 Security
Brendan Gibbs Headshot
Brendan Gibbs, VP, Automated WAN Solutions, Juniper Networks, standing and speaking. To the left is a graphic of a cloud with the text Cloud Metro, One Converged Metro for All Use Cases, Agile Service Delivery, and Brownfield & Greenfield. Three graphic boxes on its edge say Converged Network, Distributed services, New Capacity & Architectures.
Panel Discussion

A look at where we’ve been, and where we’re headed.

For service providers to deliver superior end user experiences in today’s shifting landscape, certain building blocks and innovations must be in place. Get the analyst view on the industry from Ray Mota of ACG Research, and learn about the latest technology and solutions from Brendan Gibbs, VP, Automated WAN Solutions at Juniper Networks.

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You’ll learn

  • Service provider goals, challenges, and opportunities

  • Key benefits of network automation

  • Why the metro is the new edge

Who is this for?

Network Professionals Business Leaders

Host

Brendan Gibbs Headshot
Brendan Gibbs
VP, Automated WAN Solutions, Juniper Networks

Guest speakers

Ray Mota Headshot
Ray Mota
CEO and Principal Analyst, ACG Research

Transcript

00:07 Hi everybody.

00:08 My name is Brendan Gibbs.

00:10 I'm Vice President of Junipers Automated WAN Business.

00:12 Thanks for joining the Service Provider Session of Juniper's Global Summit.

00:16 Now I'd like to introduce Ray Mota,

00:18 who is CEO and Principal Analyst of ACG Research.

00:22 Ray's going to talk to us a little bit about what's happening today

00:25 in service provider networks.

00:27 -Thank you, Brendan, and welcome everyone to the summit.

00:31 As he mentioned, ACG focuses on service provider space, and we do a lot of

00:36 business cases from that area, and we talk to a lot of executives,

00:38 so I'm proud to be part of this event.

00:41 One of the things that I want to talk about initially is when we look at

00:45 where we're going as you can't have a discussion without talking

00:48 about where we were before in 2020.

00:51 We saw that, from a macroclimate point of view, global GDP was down about

00:55 almost 4%, but there are some great opportunities and a lot of lessons

00:59 to learn regarding simplification, automation, and how we manage

01:04 the system more efficiently because telecom allowed us to do a lot of

01:07 good things and stay communicated.

01:10 Moving forward, we see that GDP is projected to grow almost 5% in

01:15 a lot of different countries, and they're going to be moving fast.

01:18 There's going to be a lot of discretionary income and

01:21 service providers need to be prepared to handle that growth

01:24 and that speed of innovation.

01:27 As we look from a priority point of view and the challenges we see

01:31 that in 2020, the revenue was down 4%, which wasn't a surprise, right?

01:36 People were spending less, but what we're seeing is that if you stay with

01:41 the present mode of operation, doing things the way they were before,

01:45 it's going to be a challenge because capital intensity, which basically is how much

01:50 CapEx are you spending to be able to deliver this service is projected to go up

01:54 17% by 2023, which is an interesting area because that tells us that we need

02:01 to look at process in ways to challenge ourself to be able to solve that issue.

02:07 Then on top of that, what we see is ratios like OpEx divided by

02:11 revenue is continuing to go up.

02:14 That means we're spending too much finding operations to be able to

02:18 deliver that type of service, and that impacts our profitability.

02:23 Present mode of operation is not sustainable.

02:25 Doing nothing, there is a cost of doing nothing because

02:29 these metrics don't apply.

02:31 Again, I'll keep mentioning some key areas about ways

02:34 to simplify your networking.

02:36 A key way to do that, that we see is, understand what the priorities

02:41 are from the executives, and ACG meets with a lot of service provider

02:45 board levels at a bunch of different carriers from regional, national,

02:49 and global, and we're seeing from a top priority point of view is that

02:53 they're still finding challenges about creating differentiated service,

02:58 or finding ways to be innovative, but one of the key points that I hear,

03:02 especially from the CEOs is that they spend so much money in customer

03:06 acquisition costs that a top priority for them is retaining customers.

03:12 They don't want to lose that customer, but they want to get deeper and wider.

03:17 Good measure is looking at

03:19 what are your ARPU,

03:20 what additional services could you offer,

03:23 but one that ACG has been talking a lot about is what we call APPU

03:27 or APPS, which is average profit per user, or average profit per subscriber.

03:35 That's some measure that you want to look at to see is it

03:38 moving in the right direction?

03:40 Then from a goals perspective on top of innovation, the number two

03:45 area was about growing revenue.

03:47 To my surprise, it was interesting to see that number three was all

03:52 related to customer experience.

03:55 In that area, service providers need to look at that

03:58 from a board-level point of view,

04:01 customer experience, it's top of mind for a lot of these board levels.

04:05 Then the obvious ones like reducing costs, flexibility, and time to market.

04:10 What we see is that primarily the three types of priorities is that,

04:16 and don't get stuck just on one.

04:18 We see a lot of discussions when we meet with service providers, just

04:21 focusing on network agility, you need to be able to map network agility

04:26 to service agility to business agility.

04:29 When you think that mindset you're able to look at holistically in that area.

04:34 I always get the question of, "Well, how do we get there?"

04:36 Well, there needs to be a transition, there isn't just a switch you

04:40 turn on and there needs to be phases associated with that.

04:44 If we look at today, I do have discussions with a lot of these

04:47 board levels or executives, and I hear the term is we have

04:52 automation, and we have simplicity.

04:55 What I see is that there's way too many silos of automation,

04:59 they're doing way too many scripts, and these types of ways of doing it creates

05:05 redundant types service that the network is to tie to the service,

05:11 and it is inefficient, they aren't getting the benefits that they need.

05:16 I recommend that you look at a hybrid approach and then go into a

05:19 full digital service provider, where you're able to start transitioning

05:23 and putting in these new hardware applications, to be able to integrate

05:28 to the department more effectively, to be able to deliver virtualized

05:32 services in the right area but start the roadmap to digital service provider.

05:38 Ideally, the goal is and when you do this right, is that you create

05:41 what we call a borderless network, where the network is agnostic

05:47 to the service, and when you can get to that area where you're moving

05:50 CEOs to data centers, that's a transition to get more benefits.

05:55 Present mode of operation is not sustainable,

05:58 you need to create something.

06:00 Now, ACG does a tremendous amount of research and surveys associated

06:06 with automation and edge services.

06:09 Mark Mortensen and PJ on our team actually just did something recent,

06:15 and there were three areas that came out of what the

06:17 benefits were from their survey.

06:19 Initially, number one was about what we call operational costs.

06:23 It's about what we call cost optimization.

06:27 How do I look at the process that I have in place, and reduce in continuous

06:32 to do constant cost optimization?

06:35 Then the other part which was interesting is what we

06:37 call operational agility.

06:40 That says, "How long does it take for present motor operation with

06:45 the new operations to be able to deploy services much quicker?"

06:50 Then the business agility, "How do I onboard these services much quicker?"

06:55 In this survey, what they found out is that, and this is why I think it

06:59 was a surprise to me after seeing that customer experience is that 72% said

07:05 that a key driver for automation was increasing customer satisfaction,

07:11 which relates back to that ARPU question.

07:14 You spend so much money to acquire that customer, a key priority

07:18 is maintaining that customer.

07:20 Then 56% said is all about developing and creating new services much

07:26 more efficient, and 35% said it was about improving OpEx.

07:31 Process optimization is a key driver when you look at that.

07:36 On top of automation, another key area that we see is that traffic

07:41 is becoming somewhat unpredictable.

07:44 It used to be that traffic was very predictable, you could have a cloud

07:48 application connect to an end-user, and we were able to model and build

07:53 the traffic somewhat efficiently, but the reason it's becoming unpredictable

07:58 is because you have a lot of 5G devices being deployed,

08:01 you have a lot of sensors being deployed.

08:05 Those sensors and devices are being connected to the network,

08:08 which is creating an environment for this unpredictability of the traffic.

08:13 What's happening is traffic is shifting more and more

08:17 to the edge, and service providers need to have in store an environment

08:22 that addresses that shift in traffic.

08:26 As we look from a distribution point of view, we see that mobile traffic,

08:31 as well as broadband traffic, is increasing almost at a factor

08:36 of the most four in some cases.

08:38 We see that subscribers from a mobile point of view from 2020 to 2025,

08:44 are increasing to about 25 gigabits per month, and we see from a broadband

08:50 almost 1.4 terabits per month.

08:53 The edge is where all the traffic's moving, but I also say that on top of

08:59 the traffic, there's opportunities there and I think the opportunity is huge.

09:04 With a lot of service providers, they are always coming to me about,

09:06 "Ray, help us develop a business case for 5G, we don't see

09:10 the premium on the consumer side."

09:13 What we're finding is that until there's that killer application

09:17 for that consumer 5G, there's other ways to recoup and be able

09:22 to justify the spending in the 5G.

09:25 That's related to things like edge, private 5G MEC because a

09:30 lot of these verticals have a need to be able to solve this issue.

09:36 With all that spending going on, one of the top mind questions I get

09:40 is like, "I get it that I need to create an enterprise-type solution

09:46 for 5G, but how do I fit in?

09:49 What are the revenue opportunities?"

09:51 ACG created what we call a Industry 4.0 Business Architecture that's

09:56 developed into four layers and this is a complex issue, but we're

10:00 trying to simplify for you to say, "Where are you in the layers?

10:05 What areas do you want to get revenue?

10:07 What areas do you want to optimize?

10:09 What areas do you want to simplify?

10:11 What areas do you want to automate?"

10:13 If you look at Telco Cloud, which is a capacity in compute layer,

10:17 that could be a revenue area.

10:19 You look at the connectivity area regarding private and public 5G with eMBB

10:24 and all the different types of protocols connected to that area.

10:28 Then there's other layers.

10:29 What we call the edge services layer, where you have AI, machine learning,

10:34 analytics, and visualization.

10:36 Then there's an application layer, which could be video surveillance.

10:40 In some cases, service providers might have to partner and they are,

10:45 but this creates a good entry point

10:47 when you're working with your vendor to say,

10:50 "These are the areas we want to optimize.

10:52 These are the areas we're going to partner with.

10:54 These are the areas that we want to be able to develop revenue and create

10:58 a revenue and cost optimization thing and see what areas are

11:02 impacted by the edge and what areas could be impacted by automation."

11:08 With that, I'd like to kick it over to Brendan.

11:11 Brendan, back to you.

11:14 -Wow. That was a really fantastic update, Ray.

11:16 Thanks so much for giving us that insight.

11:19 Now you heard Ray directly.

11:21 What we're hearing is that applications are shifting dramatically into

11:24 the Metro ever closer to end-users.

11:27 We're seeing edge compute being stood up as essentially a distributed

11:30 data center, hosting such compelling applications such as video caching

11:34 with CDN or 5G user planes, as well as even distributed security gateways.

11:40 What we're finding is that Metro is really the hot

11:44 place to be at this point.

11:45 We're seeing what used to be a fairly static port aggregation model

11:49 in the Metro becoming a pace of dynamic change where the distributed applications

11:54 need to fundamentally have an any to any type of communication flow.

11:59 This drives new traffic patterns.

12:01 It also drives new network architectures.

12:04 One of the things that Ray's ACG Research has found is that

12:08 by 2025, we're expecting a 4X increase in bandwidth capacity

12:12 in the Metro, because of all of these distributed applications.

12:17 As a result of all this, we fundamentally believe

12:19 this becomes the new edge.

12:20 The Metro becomes the place for service launch points.

12:24 With all of that capacity, we fundamentally need a new scalable IP fabric,

12:29 net new networking platforms that have the capacity and the new

12:33 protocols to accommodate this type of any to any communication flow,

12:37 but because these are distributed services,

12:39 these Metro platforms also need to have

12:41 high degree of service intelligence.

12:44 We need to have the ability to differentially recognize and

12:47 steer all these different services to wherever they may be hosted.

12:52 One of the things you heard from Ray was that in a survey they've done of service

12:56 providers, 72% of providers polled found that what they're really most focused

13:01 on is customer satisfaction, assuring a high quality of experience for their own

13:07 users and the way they wanted to deliver those services is with automation.

13:11 72% of SPs believe that automation is key to customer satisfaction

13:16 for their own businesses.

13:18 Taken together, this is a dramatic change in the Metro environment.

13:22 Juniper has a name for this.

13:24 We call this the Cloud Metro.

13:26 What we've done is we've taken some lessons from hyper scalers who have

13:29 built some of the biggest cloud architectures in the world with massive

13:33 scalability and always-on application usage, but we've translated this with

13:38 a uniquely service provider flavor.

13:41 Now, what Cloud Metro requires and what Juniper delivers with

13:45 our new services and solutions is unprecedented capacity and architectural

13:50 flexibility for the infrastructure layer for that IP scalable fabric.

13:54 This is where we support new emerging protocols, such as EVPM,

13:59 Segment Routing, and SRv6, as well as new timing protocols to

14:03 be able to support new latency-sensitive services.

14:08 Because the whole point of this is distributed services and distributed

14:12 applications, what we need then is also the ability to have transport

14:16 slicing and slice awareness built into the entire architecture.

14:20 One of the other key metrics of this Cloud Metro is of convergence.

14:25 The idea of having a converge network architecture, whether it be

14:28 for wireline or wireless services, whether it be consumer or for business services,

14:34 all on one infrastructure, one Metro, built at massive scale,

14:39 built for distributed services.

14:40 That's a Cloud Metro.

14:43 You heard it, automation is key to making all of this work.

14:47 What Juniper has introduced is the Paragon Automation Suite for helping

14:51 simplify and automate the operational life cycle, starting from planning

14:56 and design to configuration and implementation, to ongoing operational

15:01 assurance and ultimately optimization, Paragon is the easy button for service

15:07 provider networks for the Cloud Metro.

15:10 Now, what we're doing is we're pairing best of all of this together.

15:14 We're pairing a scalable IP fabric with the Cloud Metro

15:18 new infrastructure platforms that are slice-aware and service-aware.

15:22 We're pairing those as well with the Paragon Automation Suite to deliver

15:26 end-to-end transport network slicing.

15:29 This is up to service providers to decide for themselves but a slice

15:32 could be, for example, for low latency services, compared to, say,

15:36 best-effort services or it could be to separate best-effort traffic,

15:40 internet traffic, latency-sensitive rich media.

15:44 It could be for wireline or wireless.

15:47 It could be anything that a service provider might decide.

15:50 What Juniper is offering is the tools to have the end-to-end

15:53 slicing with the application and service awareness, end-to-end

15:58 throughout the entire architecture, infrastructure and automation combined.

16:02 As I've said, part of the Cloud Metro and part of the new pace

16:06 of change for the Metro is of having new architectural tenets.

16:10 We're supporting what other provider might require,

16:13 whether it's traditional scale-up service delivery platforms or whether it's a

16:18 new scale-out architecture with new spine-leaf style class fabric designs.

16:23 Juniper has best-in-class brand new platforms to offer

16:26 for this scalable IP fabric.

16:28 From the access and the aggregation ROM with our ACX platform

16:32 to the service gateway or the service node with our MX routing platforms.

16:38 Just to summarize, what we have done is we are recognizing as we said,

16:42 that the architecture is fundamentally changing,

16:45 applications are getting distributed.

16:47 We believe providers need fundamentally change to adapt to this new normal,

16:51 to build up a new scalable IP fabric for the Cloud Metro,

16:55 to build unprecedented levels of service intelligence,

16:58 and new automation framework for

17:00 Experiencing-First Networking.

17:03 So thank you, I appreciate you listening to my session.

17:05 And I'd like to invite you to attend the next sessions for this service

17:09 provider spotlight series hosted by Andrew Vaz and Mats Nordlund.

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