The promise of the Open Compute Project’s networking effort is a “white box” for networking gear: networking equipment built on open hardware specifications that are not tied to specific operating systems. Juniper historically has built its own hardware, with its own silicon, and then used its own JUNOS operating system on top. Though Open Compute might on the surface appear to be directly competitive with the Juniper business model, Jonathan Davidson, SVP and GM, Security, Switching and Solutions Business Unit at Juniper, disagrees.
“Really we see the Open Compute Project and our OCX product specifically as a new category that is additive to (not competing with) the traditional switching market,” Davidson told Enterprise Networking Planet.
Davidson added that Juniper sees the OCX as rounding out its portfolio, not overlapping with existing products. The goal with the OCX is to open up opportunities with massive-scale cloud builders who are currently using alternative platforms, such as whitebox switches with internally developed or open-source operating systems.
Read the full story at Enterprise Networking Planet:
Juniper Embraces Linux for JUNOS and Open Compute for New Switch
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.