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Juniper adds ADVA to the fold as it continues amassing optical expertise to cope in a packet-optical world
Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) has made another friend in the optical space, as it's teaming up with ADVA Optical Networking to develop...
Actually, Juniper claims the companies don't yet know what they're going to develop.
"We saw a set of capabilities that could be attractive," including ADVA's multiplexing technology and especially its ROADMs, says Mike Marcellin, Juniper's vice president of product marketing for infrastructure gear. "We are determining which ones could be a good fit."
The companies announced their partnership yesterday, with Juniper investing $3 million in ADVA to show that it's serious about all this. It seems like a token gesture, giving Juniper a 1 percent stake in ADVA. (See Juniper Invests in ADVA.)
None of this should affect Juniper's other optical partnership, with Nokia Networks . There, the companies have worked to let NSN's DWDM systems and Juniper's routers both be controlled by NSN's management system.
That's what Juniper is doing in lieu of building a packet-optical transport system (P-OTS). Juniper thinks carriers aren't interested in OTN switching -- which often comes up in discussions about how P-OTS will operate in the core. Rather, Juniper officials say, the core should be rife with MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), taking advantage of the statistical multiplexing that's possible there. That plan would require optical and MPLS gear to work together to allow for dynamic provisioning -- hence the work with NSN. (See NSN, Juniper Converge IP & Optical, Is Juniper Junior-Grade?, Does Juniper Need Packet-Optical?, and Juniper's Packet-Optical Spells M-P-L-S.)
Of course, Juniper's conviction won't stop NSN from hedging its bets. The company has announced an OTN switch for the hiT 7300. (See NSN Adds Packet-Optical Punch.)
Unlike Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), Juniper has no optical capabilities of its own. So, these kinds of partnerships are going to be important for Juniper as carriers get more serious about merging the packet and optical layers of their networks.
Juniper and NSN have a separate partnership for marketing carrier Ethernet equipment. That one doesn't involve any joint product development.
— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading
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