Juniper wants to help enterprises adopt container and Kubernetes technologies. There's just one problem: containers still aren't part of the conversation for most network companies.

Scott Sneddon, senior director and evangelist for cloud at Juniper, told SDxCentral that the vendor has a twofold strategy to address multiple orchestration and enterprise challenges in Kubernetes as telecommunication architectures migrate into the cloud-native space. He explained that multicloud doesn’t necessarily mean multiple public clouds, but a mix of VMware infrastructure, bare metal assets, or OpenStack components.

“Supporting Kubernetes is really important for that vision in that we expect that a lot of our customers, especially our enterprise customers, are going to be trying to tackle that multiple orchestrator challenge,” Sneddon said. “If we can bring some level of consistency and simplicity in that environment, we think we can add some value and have a benefit.” 

To this end, Juniper supports Kubernetes at both ends of that stack through its portfolio of Contrail software that spans the enterprise data center (Contrail Enterprise Multicloud); the wide-area network (Contrail SD-WAN); the telco cloud (Contrail Cloud); and the edge — base stations, hub sites, and switching sites (Contrail Edge Cloud). 

And that portfolio is being used out in the wild. For example, AT&T uses Contrail to combine physical routers and switches to scale network infrastructures beyond the data center and orchestrate virtual networks within its cloud infrastructure.

Cloud-native architecture requires unprecedented levels of infrastructure portability, elastic scalability, and software automation, thus “we’ve had a natural fit in that evolution,” Sneddon added. 

The networking company has its hands in a few areas of open source, but its main involvement in the community surrounds its Tungsten Fabric open source SDN project. Tungsten Fabric was formerly known as OpenContrail before the controller was moved to the Linux Foundation in 2018. That move provided a clear distinction between the open source code of Tungsten Fabric versus the commercial Contrail products offered by Juniper. In fact, Juniper’s decision to move OpenContrail to the Linux Foundation came after criticism that the code wasn’t really that open.

Following a year of numerous security bugs within the Kubernetes ecosystem and the first security audit of Kubernetes conducted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which hosts the open source platform, continued wide-spread adoption has seen security become somewhat of an afterthought.  

Last fall, Juniper pushed security down to its MX routers and updated its containerized firewall as part of its Connected Security strategy. Juniper also updated its cSRX containerized firewall so that it can integrate with traditional network security management and SDN controllers, such as its Contrail platform or Tungsten Fabric.

According to Sneddon, Juniper sees this as an “opportunity to add value with a sound networking and security solution” with its Contrail Container Network Interface (CNI) for Kubernetes. 

“I think there's a realization that this isn't just a science project anymore. We do need to understand what networking teams have to offer and how security gets factored in,” Sneddon said of network companies’ relevance in the industry. “You're seeing more desire for network-centric activities within the CNCF.”

Juniper rolled out Contrail Enterprise Multi Cloud two years ago as a more open alternative to a “closed system vendor” such as VMware’s NSX offering. Juniper’s technology controls both the underlying devices of the data center infrastructure as well as the policy control overlay.

“Yes, they're placating to the open cloud-native world. Yes, they're contributing code and using things. But really what they want to do is keep you on their platforms,” Sneddon claimed of VMware’s platform.

Juniper is in a strong position to mount an attack and capitalize on what has been a rough start to the fiscal year for VMware as the software giant has struggled with integrating its vast trove of acquisitions.

Juniper’s tightly coupled offerings with Red Hat, which was recently acquired by IBM, present an opportunity to not only expand the networking company’s breadth of the commercial services but give it the leverage to rival VMware in the cloud-native market.