Juniper is hosting its annual NXTWORK user conference this week in Las Vegas, and the company's CEO, Rami Rahim, is in the spotlight at an interesting time. Rahim believes Juniper is a market challenger -- and with so many inflection points in networking and telecom now, it's a time for companies like Juniper "to challenge, to take share and to disrupt."

Indeed, enterprises and service providers need more than just fast boxes and low prices. With new network upgrades on the horizon, Juniper itself is being challenged; the company's service provider business has been in decline for several quarters.

Light Reading's Phil Harvey and Kelsey Ziser spoke with Rahim recently about what's next for Juniper. The conversation covered Juniper's big bet on 400G, how it stands out in the market against competitors as diverse as Arista and Cisco, and where Juniper's next wave of telecom momentum will come from. He was bullish about Juniper's prospects in 400G but took a wait-and-see stance on Infinera's new XR optics technology and whether it would gain enough market momentum.

Rahim was also asked about Juniper's use of artificial intelligence and the company's ambition to help network operators build a "self-driving network." In a discussion about Juniper's acquisition of Mist, the enterprise WiFi vendor, Rahim weighs in on why it's so important that Mist can apply AI, not just to keep the network up, but also to make sure it is performing well for users. Not being able to do both, he said, can be costly to enterprises and service providers alike. "Mist is the first solution that I have seen that actually enables IT administrators to determine how good the network is actually performing down at the user level," Rahim said.

Listen to the podcast for more of Rahim's thoughts on new optical networking breakthroughs, Juniper's competitors and his expectations for a week in Las Vegas at the NXTWORK event.

Also, in case you missed it, please check our Light Reading's latest interview with Juniper's CTO Bikash Koley on the company's prospects in the ongoing 5G buildout. (See Juniper CTO Talks About the Company's 5G Aspirations.)

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— Phil Harvey, US Bureau Chief, Light Reading