Juniper Networks is driving its artificial intelligence (AI) focus deeper into its cloud-hosted networking and assurance product lines and bolstering its Marvis AIOps digital assistant platform, leaning heavily on what has been a significant momentum driver for the vendor.

The updates are being driven into Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform the vendor announced earlier this year. That initial launch included Juniper’s Marvis Minis technology, which brought a digital twins approach to Juniper’s AIOps model.

The Marvis Minis now extend into Juniper’s wired environments, which can now diagnose authentication issues in those environments without requiring users or devices. This can expose switch authorization issues tied to the remote authentication dial-in user service (RADIUS) protocol server failures and a path toward correcting these issues.

Juniper’s Marvis also gained the ability to identify and correct misconfigured switch ports and access point loops. This adds to its previous ability to identify missing virtual LANs (vLANs), port flaps, high processing usage and stuck ports.

There is also a new Marvis Application Experience Insights service that expands integration into Zoom and Microsoft Teams for monitoring of those communication sessions. This feature is trained using Juniper’s intelligent data and can predict call quality prior to an actual video session. This adds to the use of Juniper’s Mist Systems and Mist AI which could verify the source of a problem after a video call had occurred.

“This announcement directly addresses two of the top concerns from our customers and partners: how to proactively stay ahead of constantly changing user demands, and how to ensure critical applications like Zoom and Teams perform as desired, regardless of where users are located,” Sudheer Matta, GVP of products for Juniper’s Campus and Branch Portfolio, explained in a statement.

Juniper simplifies Mist deployments

Juniper’s Mist platform has also gained cloud integration with unified endpoint management (UEM) and mobile device management (MDM) products from vendors like Jamf and Microsoft. This allows the Mist Access Assurance service to automatically verify devices attempting to join a network and ensure they adhere to corporate security and device policies.

The Mist Access Assurance service also now supports seamless onboarding at more than 10,000 education roaming (eduroam)-connected locations. This can support different authentication methods to grant access to home users, visitors, staff, IoT devices and guests.

Juniper also expanded the reach of its real-time dynamic packet capture (dPCAP) product from wireless to its wired offerings. This new Juniper Wired Assurance product can proactively capture packets in the cloud to help detect and fix the cause of system issues.

For wireless networks, Juniper now provides its AI-Native Dynamic Spectrum Capture feature that provides insight into RF spectrum usage across Wi-Fi connections. This allows users to identify root causes of wireless interference issues and reduce potential site visits.

Juniper AI remains key driver

Juniper’s AI-based services remain significantly important to the vendor and its potentially new parent company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Juniper late last month reported slowing financial results with the only bright spot being the ongoing strong growth of its Mist product line. The networking vendor posted just over $1.1 billion in revenue for its first fiscal quarter of 2024, which was a 16% year-over-year drop compared to the same quarter last year, with those latest results also falling short of the more than $1.2 billion in revenues expected by analysts.

Juniper management (again) pointed to macroeconomic and customer purchasing challenges that offset robust growth from its Mist business.

“While many of our customers continue to be impacted by macro headwinds and the digestion of previously placed orders, we are starting to see a recovery in demand from our cloud customers and saw another quarter of double-digit order growth in our Mist-led business,” Juniper CEO Rami Rahim wrote in a statement. “I remain optimistic regarding our long-term growth prospects, particularly as customers adopt our AI offerings, both for network operations and data center use cases.”

Rahim’s AI optimism was backed by a recent Gartner report that ranked the vendor as the most upper-right vendor in the “leaders” box of its latest Magic Quadrant four-square game for enterprise wired and WLAN infrastructure vendors. Gartner touted Juniper’s artificial intelligence (AI)-infused Mist platform, its expected plans to invest in generative AI (genAI), strong security offerings and its campus fabric platform.

“Juniper’s client base is globally diverse, with particular focus on the general enterprise market, as well as retail, education, government and health care,” Gartner’s report notes. “The company continues to invest in integrated AI and ML [machine learning] operations, as well as cloud-based security capabilities. Gartner expects that Juniper will invest in genAI integration for enhanced capabilities in its natural language processing interface.”

That base was also highlighted by Dell’Oro Group, which also cited Juniper as a leader in the WLAN space. The research firm found Juniper grew WLAN revenues both year over year and sequentially during the fourth quarter of 2023, despite overall WLAN market revenues sinking 26% in Q4.

“I think that Mist is really resonating, that’s what I’m hearing in the market,” Dell’Oro Group Research Director Siân Morgan said in an interview with SDxCentral. “Enterprises are finding the solution very compelling. They’ve done a great job marketing it as well in terms of the functionality. They’ve had some great customers come forward and say how it’s revolutionized their business.”

Morgan also added that Juniper’s growth was helped by the vendor’s overall smaller market share, but “their message is really resonating.”