Juniper Networks and Aruba Networks, on Tuesday announced that they have signed a strategic agreement to deliver open, converged wired and wireless network solutions based on best-of-breed technologies. The partnership includes both joint development efforts and go-to-market collaboration, with the goal of providing innovative solutions for the toughest problems facing enterprises.
 
As part of this effort, Juniper is enabling technology partners, like Aruba, to take advantage of Juniper’s programmable silicon by making available key software elements and new programmable application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable the High-IQ enterprise – an open, smart approach to enterprise networking that allows customers to fundamentally transform the user and operator experience. This will help foster industry collaboration to accelerate innovation for customers and partners.
 
“Juniper is delivering best-of-breed High-IQ networks to customers to remove complexity and increase control of their critical infrastructure. Bringing these capabilities to the Enterprise is core to our strategy and our partnership with Aruba is a key example of open, intelligent solutions.  With Aruba we jointly deliver a unique, interoperable wired and wireless solution that will enable customers to realize performance, cost, intelligence and simplified management benefits. Additionally, Juniper’s Open Convergence Framework provides customers with comprehensive solutions optimized for the unique requirements of the Enterprise”, said Shaygan Kheradpir, CEO, Juniper Networks.

“The question on the table is not if employees will bring their own mobile devices into the workplace, but rather how those devices will be supported. There’s an urgent need for IT departments to efficiently handle #GenMobile’s all-wireless requirements and the resulting influx of mobile device traffic. Aruba’s joint development agreement with Juniper Networks brings together the best in mobility technology with a leader in wired switching and routing. The resulting right sized network will help automate and accelerate business operations and deliver an integrated mobility experience on which #GenMobile can depend”, said Dharmendra Kumar, Country Manager, Aruba Networks India.

According to Canalys, a global technology research firm, the mobile device market is expected to reach 2.6 billion units by 2016. Efficiently and intelligently managing this influx of devices and traffic has become increasingly difficult and complex for IT departments. Additionally, the rapid adoption of business applications – such as voice-over-Wi-Fi clients – means more comprehensive orchestration is needed, requiring granular policy and performance management to ensure that key applications are secured and optimized.
 
Together, Juniper and Aruba are addressing these mobility market trends with product-level integration that leverages open protocols and open APIs on Juniper switches and routers, and contextual data on users, devices, applications and location available from Aruba’s enterprise Wireless LAN (WLAN) products. With this integration, enterprises will be able to optimize application performance, enable mobility-centric security and policy, and reduce total cost of ownership by eliminating vendor lock-in.