NEW YORK -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today introduced the EX-series of Ethernet switches, setting new benchmarks for high-performance network infrastructure in the enterprise. Running on Juniper's powerful JUNOS (TM) software, a single-source network operating system, the EX-series will deliver the operational simplicity, carrier-class reliability, and infrastructure consolidation and integration that helps high-performance businesses accelerate the deployment of business-enabling applications and services across the network. By alleviating the cost, complexity and risk associated with legacy switch infrastructures, the EX-series switches advance the economics of networking.

IT organizations are under continuous pressure to meet demanding and changing application and service requirements that enable innovation. CIOs are being driven to provide ubiquitous access to strategic assets and business processes across the customer value chain, invest in advanced applications and services that provide the business agility to attract and grow relationships, and improve security measures to protect assets shared across the network. In tandem, CIOs are being pressed to improve operational efficiencies to maximize productivity and profitability. Enterprises continue to struggle to meet these requirements with existing legacy network infrastructures that are limited in performance, slow to adapt, and costly and complex to manage.

The EX-series switches address this dilemma, enabling high-performance businesses to deploy a high-performance network infrastructure based on three key tenets -- operational simplicity, carrier-class reliability, and integration and consolidation -- to enable ubiquitous access to strategic assets, reduce network downtime and enhance overall security to shared assets across the extended enterprise. Juniper's EX-series switches will help businesses advance the economics of networking by reducing capital and operational expenses, freeing IT budget resources that can be invested in innovative technologies and services that improve operational efficiency and add to the bottom line.

Changing the Rules, Winning The Game

With Juniper's EX-series switches, high-performance businesses will be able to deploy a cost-effective family of switches that deliver the High Availability (HA), unified communications, integrated security and operational excellence required today, with the ability to support the requirements of tomorrow. The EX-series switches are right-sized for campus, data center and remote office environments and feature many of the same carrier-class hardware and software architectures found in Juniper's core routers that were purpose-built to support the convergence of data, voice, and video onto a single always-on network.

Operational Simplicity: Faster Time-to-Innovate

Legacy enterprise switch infrastructures are often inundated by multiple, inconsistent versions of network operating systems, resulting in unpredictable performance as new features are enabled on the network. By leveraging the modular JUNOS software, EX-series switches utilize a single-source operating system that offers a uniform set of features, consistent implementation, and universal configuration and management tools. Running a single-source operating system with unified management across a high-performance network infrastructure enables faster innovation by providing network administrators with the confidence to quickly turn on new features without compromising network performance and stability. A common operating system across the enterprise network infrastructure can further reduce training, maintenance and management costs, which translates into lower TCO.

Carrier-Class Reliability: Keeping Pace with Evolving Business Demands

High-performance businesses increasingly view the network as critical to their success, and can no longer afford the complexity, cost and risk of turning on new network features that can take down the network. To mitigate the impact of security risks on network operations, Juniper Networks has integrated its Unified Access Control (UAC) solution with the new EX-series switches to provide businesses with the ability to control user access to mission critical applications and company assets through the enforcement of end-to-end policies.

Integration and Consolidation: Lower Administration Overhead

Traditional enterprise networks are often built upon multiple layers of switches deployed in three general areas: access, aggregation and core. Originally designed to deliver scalable port density and performance and minimize the impact of network failures, these multiple switching layers can add unnecessary cost and complexity to the network and consume a significant portion of the IT budget just to keep them up and running.

Juniper's EX-series switches will deliver scalable port densities and carrier-proven high availability features that consolidate legacy switch layers, helping to reduce capital and operational expenses and advance the economics of networking. The EX 4200 series Ethernet switches with Virtual-Chassis (TM) technology, for example, deliver the same Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 10GbE port densities as traditional chassis-based switches, but at one-eighth the footprint and less than one third the cost, providing businesses an economical pay-as-you-grow approach to building high-performance networks. For greater application visibility, the Juniper EX-series switches will feature ASIC-based flow capabilities that permit the hardware-based collection of network statistics combined with the integrated ability to identify applications. This can significantly reduce administration and training costs, troubleshooting, downtime and outsourcing costs.

'As our business has evolved from a focus on regional, floor-based trading to a national electronic exchange that removes virtually all human interaction, the scale of our infrastructure has grown by orders of magnitude, and the speed with which we can deliver information and execute orders is the number one requirement for our participants,' said Frank Ziegler, vice president of communications at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. 'Juniper's high-performance network infrastructure enables PHLX to be one of the fastest and most reliable Reg NMS-compliant electronic trading venues in the world. The addition of the new EX-series Ethernet switches will help us expand our fast, reliable and secure network and continue to meet the evolving performance needs of our users.'

Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR)