Networking equipment and service giants Juniper Networks and Cisco are both ratcheting up their respective AI efforts as they attempt to crack a still evolving market and look to bolster their bottom lines.

Juniper Networks made the most recent move, launching new features this week that highlight AI-related efficiencies enterprises can glean by adopting the vendor’s AI-focused platforms.

Jeff Aaron, group VP of product marketing at Juniper, in an interview with SDxCentral walked through the vendor’s new “Blueprint for AI-Native Acceleration” program. This includes a handful of new tools, include targeted training courses for business leaders; programs that allow qualified customers to try out Juniper Networks AI-related products and services; a program to help customers purchase products and services; and a new AI-powered support program.

Aaron explained that the program overall is designed to help streamline and accelerate the adoption and deployment of AI-based services. This includes the bold and number-heavy tune of up to a 9x reduction in deployment time, 85% reduction in opex, and 90% fewer network trouble tickets.

“We looked at every stage of the journey and said, okay, what are the big friction points, and how do we kind of smooth them out, regardless of how you're entering the platform, whether you're entering it from the WAN side or from the wireless side, doesn't matter, we want to get you there,” Aaron said.

The programs build on Juniper Network’s AI-Native Networking Platform that it launched earlier this year.

That initial launch included Juniper’s Marvis Minis technology, which brought a digital twins approach to Juniper’s AIOps model. The vendor followed that up by extending its Marvis technology deeper into its networking environments, and then its AI into SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE).

“When we launched the platform we wanted to make it clear that it was a platform, not an architecture, and it does span across all of our products,” Aaron said of that evolution. “It's across the whole domain.”

Differentiation from competitors like Cisco

Aaron noted that some of the new moves are unique to the vendor, specifically pointing to the education program. “No one has an AI class for business leaders,” Aaron said.

Aaron also acknowledged that others are similar to what competitors are also doing. This includes the financing aspect that is being used to get a foothold into an enterprise.

Cisco, for instance, launched a program last year that allowed customers to defer payment on products and services for up to a year.

“We know if we go to Cisco or Aruba or our competitors, if you just give us your toughest building, we know if we get in the door, we're going to crush it,” Aaron said. “Once you see the AI-Native, you can’t unsee it.”

Cisco obviously feels the same way as the vendor recently put AI as a core tenant to a broader corporate restructuring that it announced as part of its most recent earnings call. That move will see the vendor refocus efforts around AI, cybersecurity thanks to its $28 billion Splunk acquisition, and cloud. It will also see Cisco cut up to 7% of its workforce.

“Looking ahead, we remain laser focused on growth and consistent execution as we invest to win in AI, cloud, and cybersecurity,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said during the earnings call. “To focus on these key priority areas, today we announced a restructuring plan to allow us to both invest in key growth opportunities as well as drive more efficiency in our business.”

As part of that move, long-time Cisco networking executive John Davidson also left the vendor, with Cisco’s networking business moving under the control of newly established Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel.

Analysts were mostly positive on the Cisco restructure, noting it freed the vendor up to focus on those high-growth markets.

“Overall, we find that Cisco’s portfolio consolidations focused on bolstering its AI, security, and cloud capabilities pave the way for Cisco to better capitalize on the AI megatrend and the prioritization on organization-wide security implementations including full integration of hybrid and mutlicloud defense,” The Futurum Group noted in a report. “The portfolio realignment and organizational restructuring underpin Cisco’s return to growth path in 2025 across the burgeoning AI era.”

Juniper Networks’ AI focus key for HPE

Juniper Networks’ continued AI push also remains important for the vendor as it inches ever closer to being acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

The European Commission (EC) earlier this month provided unconditional approval of the deal, noting the purchase “would raise no competition concerns in the European Economic Area.” This included investigations in the impact the deal could have on the supply of wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment, supply of wireless access points, the supply of Ethernet campus switches, and supply of data center switches.

That was followed a week later with approval from the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority. U.S. approval of the deal is still pending.

HPE management has repeatedly cited Juniper Networks’ AI and networking progress as being key to the deal. Aaron added that while both firms are still operating independently, there is a common belief in that AI-fueled future.

“Both companies believe that AI is the future and want to own this space and think that we can collectively do it even better together,” Aaron said. “A lot of what we're doing will hopefully play a big role in that future state.”

AI needed to power networking

The moves by Juniper Networks, HPE, and Cisco track with what is forecast to be a large business opportunity.

Research firm ISG noted in a recent report that the average large enterprise is planning to nearly double their number of AI-enabled applications by the end of this year. This will see that average grow from 250 applications that were AI-enabled at the end of 2023, to 488 AI-enabled applications by the end of 2024.

This growth is expected to increase the need for more advanced AI-focused networking equipment and services to connect data centers, cloud infrastructure, and edge locations.

Lumen Technologies CTO Dave Ward recently explained to SDxCentral that this surge will require a bolstered network architecture.

“There’s so many capacity constraints associated with constructing AI: power, literally power from the grid, and then where you can place your data center, can you get the GPUs?” Ward said. “This network capacity is a very scarce resource, in particular to where the data centers or AI data centers are being built.”