Experience-First Networking with CEO Rami Rahim | Juniper Global Summit

00:07 -Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us.

00:09 I am thrilled and grateful you've made the time to be here with us today.

00:15 It probably goes without saying

00:16 that this past year has been extraordinary.

00:19 So I first want to thank the healthcare workers and everyone else on the front

00:24 lines, keeping us safe and striving to maintain our way of life

00:28 as best we can, as well as send my sincere thoughts

00:32 to everyone who' s been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

00:36 Of course, the past year has also cast a spotlight

00:40 on many aspects of life that we used to take for granted.

00:44 From my view as CEO of a networking company, it' s never been

00:48 more apparent how critical the global network is to maintaining

00:52 some level of continuity in both business

00:55 and our personal lives, but change is afoot.

00:59 In fact, change has always been a driving

01:02 force since the early days of the internet.

01:05 Today, that pace of change has only accelerated.

01:10 It' s accelerated the nature of our modern world, the need for businesses

01:15 to digitize, and our insatiable appetite to consume and create data.

01:21 It all dictates a radically different approach

01:24 to how we build the foundation of our digital lives.

01:30 Before we dive into what these changes mean for Juniper and how they drive

01:35 our innovation, I assume most of you caught the news a month or so ago

01:40 about the NASA Rover Perseverance landing on Mars.

01:45 As a technologist and an enthusiast,

01:48 it was fascinating

01:49 for me to follow this event, not only because of what it means

01:53 for scientific discovery and interplanetary research but also

01:57 how they managed to accomplish this incredible mission.

02:01 As a great customer of ours, watching the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab fulfill

02:06 its mission has also certainly filled me with a great sense of pride.

02:13 Let' s rewind quickly for a little historical context

02:16 to the first moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969.

02:21 That moon mission and the spacecraft that was built to accomplish it were

02:26 packed with what represented the pinnacle of technology at the time,

02:30 state-of-the-art redundant computer systems, cooling space

02:34 suits, space-age fireproof materials, and freeze-dried food.

02:39 Guiding the lunar landing module

02:41 required the precise control of three human

02:44 astronauts who navigated its descent onto the moon for the first time in history.

02:52 Even with computers onboard, astronaut Neil Armstrong still had

02:57 to manually take control of the craft in the last moment of the landing

03:01 to carefully lower it down onto the moon' s surface

03:05 while avoiding dangerous like boulders and craters.

03:09 In Armstrong' s words, The unknowns were rampant,

03:12 and there were just a thousand things to worry about.

03:18 Fast forward to modern day,

03:20 the objective is now to land a human on Mars.

03:24 The problem of course is that Mars is millions of miles farther

03:28 than the moon, so a journey there takes over 100 times longer.

03:33 It is no wonder that it is a journey that still

03:37 cannot be accomplished by humans, at least not yet.

03:40 The technical barriers are just immense.

03:44 At least for now, the name of the game will be about uncrewed missions.

03:49 While feasible, these missions are certainly no small feat.

03:54 NASA' s Perseverance project started in 2013 and costs

03:58 almost three billion in development dollars.

04:01 Practically every aspect of the mission has been awe-inspiring,

04:07 but maybe the most amazing part was in the Rover landing itself.

04:11 It's seriously the stuff of science fiction thrillers.

04:16 The process to get the landing craft, carrying the Rover

04:20 onto the surface of Mars only took around seven minutes.

04:24 Seven minutes commonly referred to by mission controllers

04:28 as seven minutes of terror, and for good reason.

04:33 In that short time period, the spacecraft had to slow

04:37 down from over 12,000 miles an hour down to zero

04:41 without crashing onto the planet' s surface.

04:45 It had to see below and around itself and make constant adjustments

04:50 to avoid poor landing sites on a challenging Martian terrain.

04:55 It had to shed its solar panels, radios, and fuel

04:59 tanks at precisely the right time on the way down.

05:03 With a communication latency between earth and Mars, anywhere

05:06 between five and 20 minutes, the landing had to be fully autonomous.

05:12 In other words, no human involvement whatsoever.

05:17 It should come as no surprise

05:19 that the Perseverance Rover has more automation

05:22 and artificial intelligence technology built into it than any prior Mars mission.

05:29 Humans had been completely eliminated from the equation by necessity.

05:36 Why am I telling you all this? To make a point.

05:39 While the situation might not be quite as extreme here on Planet

05:43 Earth, the need to remove humans from the equation exists here as well.

05:51 It goes without saying that without humans

05:54 a mission like this would not be possible at all,

05:58 but achieving more and exploring further becomes a practical,

06:02 impossible feat without the help of machines or automation and AI.

06:10 Humans need to have the time to focus on innovating, on building

06:14 amazing things that deserve to be celebrated, like the networks,

06:19 the power connections, and empower change around the world.

06:23 Planning what a network should look like, setting up and configuring it,

06:27 and then running ongoing maintenance and troubleshooting,

06:30 managing updates and assuring service uptime can comprise

06:34 a monumental series of complicated tasks, manual tinkering,

06:38 and days and days of tedious work.

06:42 Those are precious days that could be spent on higher-level tasks that drive

06:48 the business forward, not just wasted on keeping the IT lights on.

06:54 For decades, this industry has become a race to out spec

06:59 and leapfrog each other with the latest and fastest box

07:03 as the complexities of operating the network mountain.

07:07 Juniper was founded on and has derived at success from making high-performance

07:13 networking silicon, systems and software for large and typically,

07:17 very technical customers around the world.

07:21 The good news is that Juniper is very good

07:23 at this, and we all continue to be very good at it.

07:28 Networks for the next decade

07:30 will not look like the networks of the last two decades.

07:34 While networks have traditionally been core to the value chain

07:37 of service providers, in particular over the last 20 years, now,

07:41 they are core to the value chain of all businesses.

07:45 As infrastructure has become infinitely

07:48 more complex, the box simply isn' t enough.

07:54 Winning the next decade of networking will require a new

07:58 solution that shifts the mindset from traditional measures

08:02 of performance and scale to one focused on operational

08:06 simplicity through software driven automation and assurance.

08:11 Think about this as going beyond just building better networks.

08:15 Our goal is to make networking better.

08:18 The distinction might sound subtle, but it is not.

08:23 This is why Juniper is so committed

08:26 to simplifying the life of the network operator

08:29 to fundamentally transform her experience of deploying and running

08:33 the network, to free her time from the mundane job of keeping the lights on,

08:38 and allowing her to truly move the needle for the business,

08:42 so she can be a hero to her customers, our customers.

08:46 You deserve a better experience.

08:51 At Juniper, we' re not landing a Rover on a planet

08:54 that' s hundreds of millions of miles away.

08:57 Maybe we play a small part in it, but to us, transforming

09:01 the experience of networking is just as exciting.

09:05 For instance, the IT heroes at ServiceNow have crushed the number

09:09 of trouble tickets they' re dealing with on a day-to-day basis by 90%.

09:15 This means that 90% of network issues are now being

09:19 resolved and or completely avoided by machines, by AI.

09:26 Think about what that means to the experience

09:29 and happiness of the IT staff.

09:32 Think about what that means to those that depend on the network

09:36 to connect, innovate, and engage with end customers.

09:40 Sounds easy enough. Right?

09:42 After all, many other industries from mobile phones to makers

09:47 of business and personal applications have hired entire

09:50 teams and poured billions of dollars into improving

09:54 how we use and how we feel about using their products.

10:00 I' m sure you could all name a few of your favorite brands

10:04 that make apps or products that you really enjoy using.

10:08 Unfortunately, and admittedly, I don' t think there are many

10:13 who would list a networking company in that same lineup.

10:16 At Juniper, we are going to change that.

10:22 We' re going to do it while focusing on three business

10:25 areas, each representing a different network use case.

10:30 Wide area network solutions that can handle cloud scale and agility,

10:35 cloud-ready data center solutions for public and private data centers,

10:40 and cloud-delivered AI-driven solutions for the enterprise.

10:45 Security is, of course, a foundational element

10:49 to everything, which is why we call it connected security.

10:54 First, I want to share with you how we' ve been changing

10:58 the game with our AI-driven enterprise portfolio.

11:01 This business includes Mist Wireless APs, EX

11:05 Switching, Branch SRX Security Routing, and SD-WAN,

11:10 all cloud managed and AI-driven through the Mist cloud.

11:15 More than that, it is a prime example of the power

11:19 of Experience-First differentiation driving real customer value.

11:24 At the heart of our AI-driven enterprise business is our AI engine

11:29 Marvis, which more than anything else I have seen in my career

11:34 is delivering on the promise of Experience-First networking.

11:39 As many of you have probably noticed, AI has gotten a bit of a bad

11:44 rep given how noisy the space has become and how liberally people,

11:48 especially our competitors, apply the term to just about anything.

11:54 Naturally, there are skeptics out there. I get that.

11:57 I was one of them but make no mistake, our AI solutions

12:03 and what we are delivering is as real as it gets.

12:07 Perhaps the fact that one of the top universities in the world,

12:11 which also happens to be widely recognized as the birthplace of AI,

12:16 Dartmouth College chose Juniper to provide AI-driven wired and wireless

12:21 networking is proof enough that what we have created is real AI.

12:27 With Marvis, Dartmouth is able to manage 27,000 devices with a very limited

12:34 IT staff and is even able to augment their help desk staff with students

12:39 that have little or no IT experience.

12:42 Now, I know that our competitors have been talking a big AI game or as one

12:48 financial analyst said to me during one of our recent investor day

12:52 events, "Many of your competitors have basically

12:55 adopted the same story, the same pitch."

12:59 The problem is, you can' t just put a legacy

13:02 LAN controller built for complex on-prem

13:06 deployments in the cloud and call it a modern cloud-delivered solution.

13:10 To do it right, to generate the results we' re delivering every day,

13:15 the competition would need to literally start from scratch.

13:18 Marvis has now been collecting valuable data from networks

13:23 around the world, as well as the devices connected to them

13:27 and learning from that data for over five years.

13:31 Even if the competition where to start leveraging AI today

13:35 in their own ways, they' d find themselves years behind where we are.

13:41 That' s an eternity in high-tech.

13:46 By threading Marvis through our switching, routing, and security

13:51 products, Marvis is only getting smarter and smarter,

13:55 making even more and better decisions all on its

14:00 own without a human touching the controls.

14:03 Marvis is truly unique and organizations all around

14:08 the world will continue to benefit from its differentiation.

14:14 To me, it' s no wonder why Gartner positioned Juniper as a leader,

14:19 highest inability to execute in their 2020 Magic Quadrant

14:23 for wired and wireless LAN access infrastructure.

14:26 We' re leaders. In fact, I would say we' re the leader.

14:30 Now what? Now is the time to realize the full vision

14:34 we have for our AI-driven enterprise business.

14:37 From day one, the vision behind the Mist experience has always been client

14:43 to cloud, not just wireless LAN and not even just wired and wireless.

14:49 Delivering a great user experience is necessarily about

14:54 everything between user and the cloud because ultimately,

14:58 that' s the end-to-end path that will make or break the end-user

15:03 experience, which is exactly why we' ve recently combined

15:08 with 128 Technology to bolster our vision of client to cloud

15:14 and to take our momentum and success to a whole new level.

15:20 Why 128 Technology?

15:21 After all, it' s no secret that our industry

15:24 is littered with SD-WAN solutions.

15:27 It comes down to three things.

15:31 First, 128 provides a best-in-class operator

15:36 experience for both deployment and ongoing operations.

15:39 Second, 128 brings superior economics because

15:43 of its unique tunnel-free architecture.

15:46 We' re talking here about a 40% reduction in WAN

15:50 overhead and a 75% savings in hardware costs.

15:54 Lastly, 128 offers superior performance, especially for the kinds of network

16:01 applications that matter most today, like real-time voice and video.

16:07 For example, it can take up to 30 seconds to resolve

16:12 a dropped video called using a traditional

16:14 SD-WAN solution because it takes time to find another network tunnel.

16:18 With 128, that happens in under a second.

16:22 Now, I don' t know about you, but if I' m on a customer video call

16:25 and I drop for 30 seconds, that can be much more than just mildly annoying.

16:31 It' s unacceptable.

16:34 It' s clear, that our Experience-First strategy is changing

16:39 the game in enterprise client to cloud networking.

16:44 We' re not stopping there.

16:47 Let' s look at the data center, the heart of next-gen cloud services.

16:52 In this business, we' re specifically focusing on our public, private,

16:57 and hybrid cloud data center solutions with our QFX switching

17:01 portfolio and Contrail software-defined networking offerings.

17:05 It' s with this portfolio that we' re able to support

17:08 our customers like Zoom Video Communications,

17:11 which trust Juniper to power its data center infrastructure.

17:16 We all saw the absolutely massive amount

17:19 of growth Zoom has undergone this past year.

17:22 We have a fantastic portfolio in place with industry-leading

17:27 EVPN-VXLAN support, which is increasingly becoming the network

17:32 protocol of choice for the modern data center.

17:35 We were first to market with a 400G Switch

17:38 leveraging Broadcom' s latest, Trident 4 Chipset.

17:41 Junos Evolved has the necessary attributes of a cloud-ready OS.

17:49 While the past has been dominated by CLI and the future

17:53 is making the experience of networking better, allowing people

17:59 to spend time innovating, not merely operating.

18:04 To that end, we' ve now coupled our portfolio with a truly

18:08 best-in-class automation solution by combining it with Apstra

18:13 bringing self-driving networking to the data center

18:15 with a solution developed by real industry luminaries.

18:19 In fact, Apstra pioneered the intent-based concept of network operations

18:25 that radically simplifies deploying and operating modern data center networks.

18:32 Just describe how the data centers should behave in terms

18:35 of outcomes and watch the system implement and continuously assure

18:40 that the network behavior matches your intent.

18:44 In fact, one large cloud customer running a data center

18:47 network with hundreds of switches conducted an internal

18:51 study of its Apstra deployment and found that it had achieved

18:55 a 70% faster time to resolving issues, an 83% reduction in OpEx,

19:02 and a 99% improvement in agility over its previous solution.

19:09 When you consider that our recent Uptime Institute survey found

19:13 that half of data center operators are now experiencing staffing

19:17 shortages and difficulty filling open positions, it' s no

19:21 wonder why there' s such a need for intent-based networking.

19:26 Yahoo! Japan would probably agree.

19:29 They said, of using Apstra, all you need to do is connect

19:33 the switches to the network and Apstra automatically configures them.

19:37 What used to take several days is now completed in tens of minutes.

19:45 Last but not least, let' s look at the WAN.

19:47 The business that put Juniper on the map.

19:52 It' s what allows us to count 49 of the top 50 service providers

19:56 and 20 of the top 20 cloud providers among our valued customers.

20:02 With the advent of 5G and 400G, the WAN is undergoing a major upgrade cycle.

20:08 We' re executing in this business to bring the same benefits of Experience-First

20:13 operational simplicity to our service provider, cloud provider,

20:18 and large enterprise customers as they transform

20:21 their networks for the next decade of networking.

20:25 Our approach is to focus on three key areas, the 400G

20:30 influxion, Metro and Access networking, and automation.

20:36 When it comes to performance, our classroom has a rich history.

20:41 We' ve had a front-row seat and learned every step

20:45 of the way from the most demanding hyper-scale cloud

20:48 providers and top-tier service providers in the world

20:52 as they' ve evolved their networks over the years.

20:56 Well, we' re now bringing that rich history and lessons to bear

21:01 for the 400G transition and we' re already partnering with our customers

21:05 to make this transformation a reality.

21:09 We' ve made our operating system Junos more

21:12 modular to enable a far simpler upgrade process.

21:15 We' ve made it more flexible to meet the demands of our cloud

21:19 customers that require more programmability and Junos'

21:23 advanced-state management gives operators a greater level

21:27 of visibility and much better access to data across the entire network.

21:33 We' ve now released four new Silicon Engines in the last

21:37 three years to improve performance, power efficiency, programmability,

21:42 and security to pave the way for 400G.

21:47 I have no doubt that this influxion will be big.

21:51 We have compelling and differentiated technology

21:55 and are ready to help you capture this next speed grade in networking.

22:01 In fact, we' re already seeing strong momentum with well over 100 customers

22:06 around the world who' ve made the decision to build their networks

22:10 with Juniper' s 400G routing and switching products.

22:15 Another important WAN opportunity that I am

22:18 really excited about is the Metro.

22:20 Simply put, you can' t build a robust 5G network without building

22:27 a Metro access and aggregation network that' s capable

22:31 of dealing with the vast increases in scale, and capacity,

22:36 and new service expectations that 5G promises.

22:41 In many ways, the Metro has become the new high-performance intelligent EDGE.

22:48 As a result, analysts from ACG predicts that by the year

22:53 2025, the combined average monthly mobile and fixed

22:57 broadband traffic per user on the Metro will increase nearly four

23:03 times making this one of the fastest-growing

23:06 subsegments of the WAN.

23:09 This means we must rethink how the Metro is built to prepare

23:14 for all of the opportunities and use cases 5G will unlock.

23:22 As I' ve said earlier, this isn' t about throwing more boxes at the problem.

23:28 The new challenge is in reinventing the network

23:31 to deliver more than just connectivity.

23:35 Our strategy for the automated WAN is to go beyond simplifying operations.

23:41 We want to give service providers the ability to do more than just

23:45 sell connectivity, but to also offer assured experiences to end-users.

23:51 Why? Because service providers have said that improving the customer

23:56 experience is actually the top-strategic priority for them according

24:02 to a global study of telco priorities from Ernst & Young.

24:06 A higher priority than cost controls, a higher priority than

24:10 organizational agility, and even higher priority than network upgrades.

24:14 Experience matters more than ever, especially at a time when user

24:21 expectations are at an all-time high and attention spans at an all-time low.

24:28 We' ve been working diligently to evolve the needs of the Metro with a new

24:34 solution that we just announced last week to help our customers simplify

24:40 network architectures and service provisioning.

24:44 Then you Cloud Metro, as we call it, combines

24:49 the raw horsepower of our industry-leading routers

24:52 with the automation prowess from our Juniper Paragon Automation

24:56 Suite to give our service provider customers a much simpler path

25:02 to fully assured and intent-driven service delivery life cycle.

25:08 What does that really mean?

25:10 Well, it means you can focus on driving your business forward, not

25:16 worry about the manual specifics of deploying and provisioning.

25:21 It means you can innovate new services to delight

25:25 end-users and exceed their expectations.

25:28 It means you can change the experience of the network.

25:33 As many of you likely saw last year, we acquired Netrounds, now called

25:39 Paragon Active Assurance, to give the solution portfolio a clear edge.

25:44 It gives our customers the ability to go from just offering basic connectivity

25:50 to actively assuring the highest quality of experience

25:54 possible to your end-users.

25:59 Take, for instance, what Orange Egypt, a service

26:01 provider with over 30 million subscribers

26:04 in the Middle East said about using Paragon Active Assurance,

26:08 Our operations and engineering teams can locate and fix issues

26:12 before they impact our subscribers' quality of experience.

26:16 Typically, telecoms assurance solutions take months to deploy,

26:21 but we completed this deployment project in record-breaking time.

26:26 Metro networks are about to get a lot more exciting,

26:30 and Juniper is ready to lead the way.

26:36 In summary, these are the areas in which we' re investing

26:40 and the strategy we are executing on at Juniper.

26:44 I believe with full conviction that this strategy will pay off,

26:48 not just for us, but more importantly, for our customers, for you.

26:54 As humans, we' ve spent centuries overcoming

26:58 obstacles that were once thought to be impossible,

27:02 vaulted mental hurdles and broken physical barriers have

27:06 become routine sightings in the wake of all we' ve achieved,

27:11 exploring the far reaches of outer space and delivering breakthrough

27:15 vaccines in record time are the latest headline-grabbers,

27:20 but these milestones will not decelerate.

27:23 There will be more discoveries, more innovations,

27:26 more progress, and more achievements in the coming years ahead.

27:31 Technology, more specifically, the global network that keeps

27:34 us all connected, should never be what holds us back.

27:40 We' ve reached a point where humans, for all that we' ve overcome

27:44 and achieved, simply cannot keep up with the task of manually managing rising

27:50 complexity and the deluge of data traversing our networks.

27:55 This is why our commitment to all of you, our customers

27:59 and partners, is delivering networks that are highly automated,

28:03 self-running through intelligence and software,

28:06 and increasingly through AI.

28:08 This is why our true North is Experience-First Networking.

28:15 Thank you very much.

28:18 [music]