Juniper Networks has introduced a new software solution that gives service providers a near-limitless ability to cost effectively deploy new revenue-generating services at the network edge. Juniper's new Contrail Edge Cloud packs the industry's most functionality into the smallest footprint among competitors to bring a full-fledged secure cloud experience to the space- and power-constrained edge network, which includes base stations, hub sites and switching sites.
Insatiable demand for connectivity and a need to continually invent new revenue sources have driven service providers to decentralise their network architecture and move latency-sensitive applications and services - including connected cars, AR/VR and upcoming 5G services - from the core to the edge. While this part of the network serves as a key competitive asset that operators can leverage in moving beyond offering mere connectivity services, the edge also poses space, power, economic and management challenges that require rethinking existing cloud architectures to make service creation and deployment feasible. Deploying the same amount of hardware and software in every edge site that is deployed in centralised data centres would prove costly from both a capex and opex perspective.
Contrail Edge Cloud is the industry's only production-grade solution that extends a full suite of orchestration, automation, security and analytics to the edge in order to deploy dynamic consumer and enterprise services in a cost and resource efficient manner. With this new solution that leverages the software-defined networking capabilities of Contrail Networking and Contrail Security with Kubernetes and OpenStack to provide advanced networking, Juniper has taken another step toward enabling a secure automated distributed cloud that provides operators a simple way to create, manage and monetise new services in preparation for 5G. As a champion of open source networking, Juniper has built Contrail Edge Cloud based on Linux Foundation's open Tungsten Fabric project and continues to contribute to the Linux Foundation's Akraino Edge Stack project to further the open cloud initiatives.
