Juniper Networks and IBM expand relationship

Juniper Networks and IBM have broadened their strategic relationship by entering into an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) agreement that will enable IBM to provide Juniper’s ethernet networking products and support within IBM’s data centre portfolio of products.

The addition of Juniper’s products to IBM’s data centre networking portfolio accelerates both companies’ shared vision of advancing the economics of networking and the data centre by reducing costs, improving services and managing risk.

“With Juniper’s ethernet technologies added to our data centre portfolio, IBM is able to offer customers more choice and flexibility in their networking solutions to address the growing demands being placed on their IT environments,” said Jim Comfort, IBM VP of Enterprise Initiatives. “This new OEM agreement with Juniper will help support IBM’s data centre networking initiatives through unparalleled network scalability, carrier-class reliability and operational simplicity, accelerating the deployment of our customers’ virtualized applications and services, and extending the value of their networks.”

Today’s data centres require higher performance and less complex networks as an essential element of their evolution. While there are extreme cost pressures on IT budgets, the demand on data centres only increases with exploding data volumes, demand for new services, speed and security, and always-on reliability. In addition, cloud computing will further drive the need for massive scale, efficiency and elasticity from networks and data centre architectures. The broadened IBM and Juniper relationship is further evidence of the growing importance of the high-performance network in the progression of data centres toward cloud computing or cloud-like infrastructures. Both companies agree that a high-performance network is vital to the backbone for both the data centre (enabling service production) and the global network (enabling service delivery).

“Today’s enterprise must balance IT budgets and growing network complexity with increasing end-user demands and market competition,” said Mark Fabbi, VP — Distinguished Analyst, Gartner. “Increasing enterprise options for integrated data centre solutions will allow enterprises to more easily achieve more efficient and agile data centre networking architectures. The industry will clearly benefit from the innovative, open solutions coming from a range of viable sources.”

The OEM agreement allows IBM System & Technology Group (STG) to brand, label and sell select Juniper EX series ethernet switches and MX series ethernet services routers.