Juniper Networks’ PSDP — a Powerful Tool for Service Providers

By: Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

As service providers embark on new business models, their underlying IP network becomes an important asset, enabling them to create and deliver new applications. Today’s converged IP networks carry communications, entertain, improve productivity, drive revenue growth and much more. However, the requirements of an increasingly disparate and global marketplace are creating pressure for greater network innovation that extend beyond any single vendor’s capabilities.

Juniper Networks (News - Alert) (www.juniper.net) recently introduced an innovative set of tools under their Partner Solution Development Platform (PSDP), enabling customers and partners to develop their own specialized applications for their networking platforms (IP/MPLS Routing Systems, Ethernet Switching Systems and Security Systems). The PSDP offers a powerful set of resources that include a Software Development Kit (SDK) with intelligent and secure interfaces to key network functions, which will facilitate the delivery of new services by providers. These tools provide customers and partners with greater choice and control in designing, developing and deploying specialized applications for the network. Juniper’s pioneering partner development platform for a carrier-class network operating system gives telcos greater choice and control while creating new opportunities for business growth and productivity.

Service providers are evolving towards a converged Next-Generation Network (NGN) capable of delivering a dynamic mix of new and integrated residential, business and mobile services. Open interfaces enable this convergence by easing integration between disparate types of equipment and support systems that were originally built for the standalone needs of wireline, Internet, wireless or video traffic.

Ravi Medikonda (News - Alert), Vice President of Wireline & Managed Services Segment at Juniper Networks, says, “As service providers are transforming themselves to a Telco 2.0 model where applications, content and multimedia are the key service offerings, they are compelled to make their networks relevant, by adding more service intelligence to their network. Our PSDP provides a unique and powerful tool to increase the rate of industry innovation on networks. With the PSDP, service providers or their development partners can independently create customized applications that streamline operations and enable rapid entry into new services markets.”

With the influx of IPTV (News - Alert) and Internet user-generated-content, service providers are experiencing rapid traffic growth. Many report fast-moving “hot spots” that complicate capacity planning. Meanwhile the very high growth rates for voice and video result in more and more of the traffic being especially sensitive to changes in network performance. Successfully managing traffic in this environment requires deeper information for a greater number of packets.

Integrating performance and monitoring management tools directly into the network device simplifies operations and improves scalability to deal with modern network traffic.

“Juniper’s PSDP allows monitoring applications to be distributed throughout the network,” says Medikonda. “With more insightful monitoring and analysis tools that leverage distributed network intelligence, including information of events beyond the network, networks can respond more quickly to equitably distribute load and ensure performance for high-priority services and users.”

Given the variety and complexity of these converging systems, service providers often require very specific new development for their individual integration needs and targeted market opportunities. The increasing diversity of the environments often exceeds the pace of development now available in the market.

“Among the first PSDP developments for service providers are applications addressing immediate operational challenges to improve service delivery and increase productivity in newly converged systems,” says Medikonda. “Building on top of their network, service providers can extend the Command Line Interface [CLI], automate custom operations or integrate into legacy OSS/BSS and network systems. They can also implement monitoring tools for specific services or types of customers, improving SLA compliance while reducing overhead. Integrating these functions into the existing networking devices — rather than on separate platforms — takes advantage of our hardware performance and scalability, decreases the number of devices to manage, and reduces the overall footprint of the solution.”

The power of networks is their ability to connect people with different areas of knowledge or expertise in order to produce something that neither could have done individually. This is evidenced by the rapid development of often unanticipated applications that take advantage of network reach and ubiquity. It is ironic that the Internet, an open infrastructure that has enabled many of these innovations, is itself built on predominantly closed networking platforms. With Juniper’s PSDP, these previously closed boundaries of innovation will now open up, creating a plethora of new applications that can directly influence the behavior of the underlying network, thus making the network more relevant.

To find out more, go to www.juniper.net/monetize.

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