Every technological leap creates a distinct “then” and “now” narrative. Think about how cell phones transformed communication. Back “then,” if your car broke down, you’d walk to the nearest payphone, hoping to find a twenty-cent coin. Now, a mobile phone in your pocket ensures help is just a call away. This shift is not limited to telephony; it extends from the advent of the internet and cloud computing to mainframes and floppy disks.
We’re currently experiencing another such transformative moment with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). The impact of AI spans numerous industries, but one area seeing a significant evolution is networking. The traditional “then” of networking involved cumbersome manual processes, overburdened IT teams drowning in trouble tickets, reduced productivity, and frequent disruptions. But now, AI is revolutionising how we think about and manage networks.
A shift to the “now”
If you really want to get a grip on what the “now” looks like in networking, it is worth your while to look at what our partner Juniper recently unveiled, its AI-Native Networking Platform. Imagine a network that is self-detecting, self-healing, and self-configuring. Built on over nine years of actionable network data, Juniper’s AI models bring intelligence to network management. The platform leverages natural language processing through a conversational network interface, ensuring optimal network performance and providing consistently exceptional user experiences, more productive IT teams, and reduced costs.
Consider the transformative metrics: a network that is up to 9x faster to deploy, up to 90% fewer trouble tickets, an up to 85% reduction in operational expenditures (OpEx), and up to 50% less time spent resolving network incidents. This is not just marketing hype; these are the real-world results reported by Juniper’s industry-leading customers who have implemented our AI-Native Network. They contrast the “then” of their network performance with the “now,” seeing tangible improvements and setting new standards for the industry.
Ensuring the Best End-to-End Operator and End-User Experiences
The AI-Native Networking Platform harnesses over nine years of AI learning to ensure every connection is reliable, measurable, and secure for every device, user, application, and asset. It starts with the right data—experience-first questions answered by telemetry and user state data from routers, switches, access points, firewalls, and applications. The platform continuously learns and becomes more efficient over time.
With nine years of reinforced learning, the AI-Native Platform transforms data into actionable insights. Automated workflows and self-driving AIOps (AI for IT operations) allow for proactive issue detection and resolution, often before users even notice a problem. Marvis, the industry’s only AI-Native end-to-end Virtual Network Assistant (VNA), simplifies operations and saves both time and money.
The Right Secure Infrastructure
Notably the platform is based on cloud infrastructure, built with microservices, that offers elastic scale, built-in resiliency, and bi-weekly feature updates. And as a 100% API-driven platform it extends across all Juniper products and ecosystem partners, integrating network assurance with Zero Trust security, automated orchestration, and application assurance.
Networking Assurance and Performance
What is notable about adding AI natively to the network is that Juniper is now offering self-detecting, self-healing, and self-configuring capabilities, which translate into significant operational efficiencies and cost savings. With up to 90% fewer trouble tickets, network disruptions are minimised, allowing IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than firefighting. The self-healing feature reduces the need for manual intervention, cutting truck rolls (dispatching technicians) by up to 85%, which is not only cost-effective but also environmentally friendly. This efficiency is further complemented by the platform’s ability to deploy networks up to 9x faster, ensuring that businesses can scale and adapt to changing demands swiftly.
The Best Network for Your AI
But the company hasn’t reinvented the wheel, albeit the wheel lives in the “then” and not the “now”. It has reached into its existing toolbox and included appropriate technologies, such as Mist AI which is really at the heart of this innovation. In short, Mist AI leverages AI, machine learning, and advanced data science to transform network management. It is designed to reduce time to resolution and minimise the need for onsite visits, making network operations more efficient and less costly. By providing proactive insights and automated actions, Mist AI helps organisations pre-emptively address issues, ensuring smooth and uninterrupted network performance.
AI Data Centre Networking
In the data centre, Juniper’s AI Data Centre Networking solution offers flexibility and speed. It’s the fastest way to deploy high-performing AI training, inference, and storage clusters, enabling organisations to harness the power of AI in their operations. The platform simplifies the complex processes associated with building and managing AI data centres, allowing businesses to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure.
Marvis Virtual Network Assistant
The introduction of the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) is a groundbreaking network management tool. As the industry’s first AI-driven VNA, Marvis provides both users and operators with enhanced experiences through its proactive and self-driving operations. The assistant simplifies complex network interactions, offering intuitive and seamless engagement with the network infrastructure. Marvis doesn’t just monitor the network; it actively manages it, ensuring optimal performance and reliability.
Expanding on Marvis’ capabilities, Marvis Minis introduce a new level of automation and intelligence to network management. These digital experience twins autonomously detect and resolve issues, often before they impact the user experience. This proactive approach to network management ensures that potential problems are addressed swiftly and efficiently, reducing downtime and maintaining high service levels.
Marvis for the Data Centre
Marvis extends its AI-driven capabilities to the data centre, offering the first and only AI-Native Virtual Network Assistant for this critical infrastructure. It provides comprehensive end-to-end visibility and assurance across all enterprise domains, integrating seamlessly into existing workflows. With Marvis, organisations benefit from a unified interface that simplifies network management, making it easier to maintain and optimize network performance at scale.
Live in the Now
The AI-Native Networking Platform really is designed with the modern network in mind. By integrating advanced AI capabilities, resulting in self-detecting, self-healing, and self-configuring networks the focus here is to reduce the time effort and resources needed in managing the network. When all the Juniper tools collide in this platform they create the perfect storm for proactive issue resolution, improved operational efficiency, and optimised performance, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted connectivity and lower operational costs.