Greenfield data centres fertile for network revamp

Juniper is banking on greenfields data centre builds to kickstart a reduction in the complexity of network architectures, but admitted getting corporate server rooms to follow suit will take more time.

The networking firm last week rolled out a new data centre strategy and product suite that is designed to ‘collapse’ the number of devices - and potentially switching layers - found in current data centre network configurations.

Standardising on boxes running the Juniper OS (JunOS) is one part of Juniper’s push; layer 2 and 3 network virtualisation and the introduction of high density 10GbE capabilities into the network core are also seen as key ways to reduce network complexity.

However, Juniper’s senior manager for product marketing in the Ethernet platforms group, Bobby Guhasarkar, admitted that such changes would be most visible in new data centre builds, at least in the short- to mid-term.

“It’s most applicable in a new building or when a network is at its end-of-life,” Guhasarkar told iTnews.

“People are cautious to upgrade otherwise.”

Guhasarkar is in Australia primarily to train Juniper’s partners on offering the new product suite.

He said that in his discussions, cuts to networking budgets locally did not appear apparent.

“People are not cutting budgets as much as we’re seeing in the United States,” said Guhasarkar.

“They are still worried about what might happen in Q1 or Q2 but haven’t cut anything yet.”

Guhasarkar claimed networking projects could be immune from predicted flat to negative growth predicted for the hardware market next year

“What we’ve heard from customers is the data centre is where budgets are least likely to be cut,” he said.

“Lots of people have embarked on build new facilities already and are already partway through what is a two or three year project.”

Guhasarkar also said that Juniper is ‘investigating’ 10GbE technology for server access switching. It will likely release this to time with large-scale Intel announcements expected in Q3 next year.