“Juniper Networks has three broad areas of functioning; designing and developing technologies that will allow organizations to communicate across long distances, switching technologies that are typically deployed in a business campus or large business environment to communicate and security technologies that help organizations, whether Telecom operators or enterprise operators, to secure the network and protect their data from malicious attacks that are unfortunately becoming increasingly common in the networking industry today,” according to Adrian Pickering, the regional vice president for Juniper Networks and responsible for Middle East, Africa regions as well as Pakistan.
Speaking on WebStudio TV, Adrian Pickering talks about Juniper Networks and emerging aspects in today’s market such as SDN, Cloud Computing and the growing Telecom user base organizations have to deal with. Juniper Network itself is a global organization employing an estimated 9500 people staff from 147 countries around the world. The organization designs and manufactures IT technology which allows very large enterprise, Telecom operators and government departments to provide communication services to their clients.
Customer Base in Pakistan
According to Adrian Pickering, they are “very focused on the next generations of software technologies which is really the next innovation step that allows networks to become increasingly intelligent and more automated so that network solutions can be deployed very rapidly in the changing market. It’s fundamentally what we do and our vision is to connect everything and empower everyone to utilize the network for both the way people work and develop and learn and so on.”
The company has been doing business in Pakistan for almost eight years and has developed a wide clientele consisting of telecom operators, commercial organizations, especially in the financial services. Their work has allowed them to “connect with broachers, connect infrastructures that allow (financial institutions) to deal with their customers more effectively and finally we have also work in the public sector with various ministries which provide citizens services, so very broad based customers,” shares Adrian.
He continues by saying that for Juniper Networks, Pakistan with its over 180 million population, the sixth highest in the world, is a very important market with huge potential… a potential for growth which justifies their having offices and ‘people on the ground’ here.
Serving Various Segments in the Pakistani Market
Talking about the internet-using population in the country and their relationship with the recently released 3G and 4G broadband widths in the country, Adrian is hopeful that, with increasing internet penetration, thanks mostly to mobile internet, the local arena is going to turn as a ‘progressively, emerging market’ on the international front, inviting foreign investments and helping the existing businesses prosper even more.
He backs up his statement by saying, “If you look at the fix broadband environment, you know 4.5 million subscribers is still a low percentage when you look at the overall number of citizens in Pakistan but the growth rate continues to expand. Then again, if I look at Pakistan in the context of emerging economies and compare it with other economies in my territory whether its Nigeria or Kenya or South Africa for example, I think the game change in Pakistan will be mobile internet because in many emerging economies the legacy traditional infrastructure which is there and really connects the ‘high import’ areas; in your case Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, where you have a very rapid uptake of broadband on Mobile, especially now that 3G and 4G licenses have been introduced after so many years of delay, is going to be a big game changer.”
Further terming it an exciting development for Pakistan, and comparing the local scenario to Nigeria Adrian Pickering was of the opinion that “with a population of 150 million people you know that the uptight of the mobile subscription is very rapid, and there’s no reason that Pakistan will not follow the trend in the next few years as the broadband network will roll out, smart technologies and smartphones become increasingly accessible to the population, especially since the prices of smart devices is continuously coming down, and all that combined will mean it is a potentially big game changer for this country.” Referring to statistics he also mentioned that mobile broadband subscription across Africa was growing at about 64% compound annum and there was no reason why the trend could not follow suit in Pakistan in the near future also.
Boosting Innovation at Juniper Networks
Considering aspects such as SDN or Cloud Computing as well as the need for a growing telecom user base for organizations wanting to improve their networks both internally and externally has, to a great extent influenced the innovations taking place at Juniper Networks also.
While discussing the specifics of this influence, Adrian talked about how innovations in Cloud Computing have enabled organizations to “optimize their network in greater efficiencies the assets they have got through virtualizations or optimizations.” Elaborating upon this, he mentioned, “Fundamental technologies allow a cloud infrastructure to operate effectively, continually evolving and I think the biggest revolution is in the networking component of the cloud infrastructure.” Citing an example he mentioned how the market placed a series of developments in Juniper’s switching technologies which were to go into the data center in their cloud infrastructure and which is now really providing almost a threefold increase in processing power for the data centre.
For its own part, Juniper works in close coordination with VMware, virtualization optimization technologies, in what has been called one of the closest technology partnerships in the industry to enable cloud infrastructure to be in place for clients who look for those types of capabilities. For Adrian, “Juniper is in a very strong position when it comes to providing the technology platform for the cloud infrastructure but as I travel around whether it’s a Telecoms operators or large enterprises Banks or Retailers, you know they are looking at the cloud, Public or Hybrid, to enable it to meet their business objectives in a more efficient manner. That’s when you really know that there is a lot of hype around cloud especially in the last years and I think it is really coming together here also right now. Juniper, I will argue, has a leading role, even for many of the global leaders you know if you have cloud infrastructures, if you think about a world leader in search technologies, social networking, and e-commerce. Our technologies are utilized by all of these companies and we power their infrastructure.”
Talking about SDN and network virtualization, Adian Pickering stressed their importance in the networking industry, particularly in relation to telecom operators. To elucidate, he gave an example. When using cloud infrastructure, a cloud service provider may have a customer come up and say ‘I have a shopping period coming up such as Christmas etc. and you need to provision for me another 20,000 processors so I can run my application over this hot period of time. Most cloud providers can manage to meet the clients’ demands. For a telecom operator however, your customer may need another five terra bites of network capacity to accommodate Christmas rush. “Typically it takes weeks if not months to provision the additional bandwidth across the wide area to meet that customer requirement so what the STN and NFB are doing is they bring the relevant tools and intelligence through the network operators to allow them to deploy network services in a much more efficient and optimized fashion. That is really a big step forward that SDN will provide to the industry,” he explains adding that Juniper Networks already has a customer working with them to optimize network infrastructure. Furthermore, Juniper also acquired technology company Vendol about 18 months back thereby acquiring technology that was incorporated into a manager tool, basically allowing operators to get intelligence on how the network is running.
Increasing Efficiency With Juniper Networks
Referring to a local telecom operator- client he had recently worked with, Adrian mentioned that their network, particularly the revenue generating services, were quite inefficient, since they were carrying “three times traffic across their network because of the design, considerations they have done historically comparing to the revenue generating traffic on their infrastructure.” So how does Juniper help such a telecom operator?
Their network intelligence tools and using their STN tools has allowed Juniper’s clients to operate, optimize and basically automate the way their networks as they go forth. While the technology itself may be complex, it brings back huge benefits to the customers.
On-Ground: The Local Scenario
Compared to other emerging countries and markets of Africa or Middle East, in Pakistan when it comes to mobile broadband, it is up to the service providers to build those all-important networks and capacity, and to extend the footprint not only in major urban areas but some of the rural areas as well. Juniper commissioned a study, two months ago, about broadband-utilization where they looked to multiple countries; developed as well as developing nations. The global broadband study as it was called was initiated in nine countries, some developed like UK, Germany, USA etc and others like Brazil and South Africa.
The emerging nations were growing strongest in terms of acceleration and utilization of broadband technologies across the mobile and people were utilizing the network to self-develop so as opposed to more developed countries where folks were using the network for training purposes, for e-commerce like ordering books etc online, in developing countries it was more about e-learning, doing training courses, getting access to information and content that would help one to develop their own skills and knowledge.
According to Adrian Pickering, “As compared to developed nations, emerging countries showed more satisfaction at getting that access to broadband and information. So as regards Pakistan where only around 20-22 million of the entire population have access to Internet, out of approximately 160 million, that’s still a huge way to go. Looking at the dynamics of the population, its more the young people who want to get access to the information, the network, the trainings etc. things that will help them improve their lives.
As far as telecom and network operators are concerned then, it is a huge responsibility on them also to get the networks running smoothly, make it accessible and affordable to all and the government should also be responsible to provide their citizens, no matter their age, sex or whether they are from urban or rural areas, should have easy access to networks and information. This in particular would relate to the SME community who hope to optimize their businesses online.”
The Road Ahead: Juniper’s Plans for 2015-16
For Adrian, this includes, looking to work with all of these local networks. “We are also providing professional, consulting services to other operators who have been around longer, provide resources to help them optimize their existing structures and share best practices from other countries across the world. And to do this, they ensure that they choose their local partners with care… organizations that have not only the relevant technical skills but also the strategic depth to help Juniper Networks serve their clients in Pakistan,” he concluded.
