Performance, automation and agility provided by Juniper’s MX Series routers and JET automation ramps up SoftBank’s commercial core network capacity 76-fold
Juniper Networks announced that SoftBank Group Corp. has deployed Juniper’s MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers together with the Juniper Extension Toolkit (JET) automation framework in order to upgrade and future-proof its commercial core network.
SoftBank has experienced exponential traffic growth in Japan over the past few years, driven by their continued market success, as well as the increased adoption of mobile devices, cloud services and high-definition video content. To address this ongoing traffic growth, SoftBank required an infrastructure that could provide industry-leading performance and capacity for today and tomorrow, coupled with the reliability for always-on service delivery.
At the same time, SoftBank was seeking to modernize its operations environment, and wanted an agile and automated network solution that would reduce complexity and increase speed of service delivery. After an extensive review process, SoftBank identified Juniper Networks® MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers alongside the JET automation framework as the clear choice for their next-generation network. With this new, state-of-the-art commercial core network, SoftBank has dramatically increased network capacity while at the same time implementing automation across its operations with the opening of new network connections while significantly improving long-term service agility.
For its new commercial core network, SoftBank has selected the high-capacity MX2020 and the versatile MX104 3D Universal Edge Routers, while also implementing JET technology.
With performance and stability being key criteria, SoftBank valued the MX2020’s ability to increase capacity from their current systems by 76-fold, as well as Juniper’s ability to enable the development of advanced technologies.
In addition to greatly improving network capacity, the MX2020 addresses SoftBank’s stringent reliability requirements, with support for a comprehensive set of multi-layer resiliency features that quadruples the level of redundancy offered by their previous routers, allowing SoftBank to confidently meet customer expectations and deliver additional stability to its services.
JET provides an automation toolkit that enables customers to automate configuration and provisioning tasks, enabling SoftBank to accelerate service delivery by up to 30 times when contrasted with their previous, manual approach to provisioning and configuration. Using open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), JET brings greater automation capabilities to the Junos® operating system that powers and future-proofs SoftBank Corp’s commercial core network.
Working closely with Juniper Networks, SoftBank deployed the new MX Series routers and the JET framework without disruption to their current services.
Tomohiro Sekiwa, vice president, Core Network & Device Technology Business Unit, SoftBank Corp said, “As data traffic continues to increase by-the-day, we needed to significantly upgrade our commercial core network’s capacity, performance and automation capabilities in order to continue providing the world-class levels of service which our customers expect of SoftBank. After an extensive review, we found the perfect combination of products from Juniper Networks for our requirements.
Tomohiro Furuya, country manager, Juniper Networks Japan said, “We’re delighted that SoftBank has once again selected us as their networking partner of choice for their new commercial core network – a testament to the strength of our MX Series router portfolio which has been widely deployed and well proven across top service providers and cloud builders globally. Alongside SoftBank, we look forward to a strong partnership building networking infrastructure for the future, capable of supporting the exponentially-growing Internet traffic through our reliable and agile solutions.”
