Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Juniper powers BT Network Cloud

Juniper is providing the high-performance, high-availability fabric for BT Network Cloud, which is the infrastructure that underpins BT Group's U.K. consumer and business network services.

BT Network Cloud supports diverse network applications across broadband, fixed, mobile and other mission-critical services on a single platform, using Juniper Networks’ high-performance cloud-native solutions and professional services.

BT’s cloud-native platform is deployed at multiple locations across the U.K. to form a distributed architecture designed to scale seamlessly alongside demand and to provide services closer to the end user than with traditional, more centralized deployments. The fabric is now supporting multiple key network-centric applications, such as mobile voice and data, broadband authentication and IP voice calls for tens of millions of customers.

Highlights:

  • Software-defined networking (SDN), switching and firewall solutions for its network cloud. The service provider uses Juniper’s SDN platform to automate the creation and management of its OpenStack-based telco cloud. The platform provides hybrid SDN orchestration and centralized control of virtual switching, routing and security. BT is running cloud-native containerized applications and optimizing costs using OpenStack.
  • Juniper QFX Series Switches provide the high-performance, high-availability fabric needed to support the BT Network Cloud which has rapidly become the largest container-based cloud infrastructure in the world, and is still growing.
  • Juniper collaborated with BT to deliver high-performance, high-availability fabric for BT Network Cloud. BT’s data centers contain over 1,000 Juniper QFX Series Switches and 2,000 Juniper vRouters. The switches connect all mission-critical application servers to the core network. The SDN platform is deployed on the servers to provide virtualized routing capability to connect workloads across BT’s network securely.
  • Juniper vSRX Virtual Firewalls protect and secure the data center traffic. vSRX provides a network address translation capability which was not possible for one of BT’s application providers to deliver in software.

Juniper noted that BT Group leveraged its professional services to complete the project on time and ensure that the challenging service level, availability and performance targets of BT’s applications are met.

“Telecoms services have become central to business and consumer lives and as the U.K.’s national network provider, BT Group has a particular responsibility to lead from the front to deliver the cloud-native, sustainable digital services of the future. Our work with partners such as Juniper is helping to ensure that our critical infrastructure, network and services are agile, secure and resilient for the long term. Our millions of customers can remain confident in the experience-led integrity of the everyday and exceptional digital services on which they rely.,” stated Howard Watson, Chief Security and Networks Officer, BT Group.

“We are delighted that Juniper’s cloud-native networking solutions and comprehensive professional services were selected as the cornerstone of the BT Network Cloud. BT can respond to the demands of the next chapter of digital transformation at scale whilst leveraging the power of the network to enable new digital services for BT’s customers, fully supported by a cloud-native architecture enabling security, automation, scale and agility,”states Raj Yavatkar, Chief Technology Officer, Juniper Networks.