Juniper Network’s recently launched AI-Native Networking Platform received a fresh injection of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities designed to bolster the vendor’s SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) platforms. The enhancements are being deployed within Juniper’s WAN Assurance, Premium Analytics and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant products.

The first move extends Juniper’s Marvis Minis digital twins product into the vendor’s SD-WAN platform. This allows WAN speed tests to be continuously run to check network link quality and performance without a user having to manage those tests. If an anomaly is detected, the SD-WAN platform can now take proactive measures to ensure connection quality.

This move follows on Juniper’s launch last month of Marvis Minis into its wired environment and the ability for Minis to identify and correct misconfigured switch ports and access point loops. The vendor said it’s now the first vendor to “span wired, wireless and WAN with a single AI-native digital experience twin solution.”

Juniper’s WAN service is also gaining a new service level expectations (SLEs) tracker that can monitor WAN congestion for issues that might cause a poor user experience. If an issue is detected, the WAN Congestion SLE notifies a user of that pending issue for remediation. This tracker joins the current available WAN edge health, link health and application health SLEs.

That WAN platform can also now plug Juniper’s streaming dynamic packet capture (dPCAP) platform into its Assurance product to proactively capture packets during an anomaly event to help identify and fix the issue. That option had previously been limited to Juniper’s wireless and wired products.

Juniper’s Marvis platform is also now able to cover enterprise WAN edge routing, providing its “conversational interface” to help IT teams identify and fix routing issues.

Mist-ifying analytics and networking

Customers can also use new application insights to populate what the company defines as “user-friendly visualization of the traffic traversing the SD-WAN, enabling them to see bandwidth-intensive applications and enable accurate planning and problem remediation.”

Juniper’s Premium Analytics product has gained a new security insights Mist dashboard to provide security event visibility and persona-based policy activation and threat responses for SD-WAN and SASE services. This can combine security monitoring between siloed network and security management and provide actionable intelligence to security teams for quicker incident response and remediation.

There is also a new Mist Routing Assurance product available under Juniper’s Mist AI and cloud platform lines that uses AI to allow IT teams to customize service levels for monitoring, analyzing and resolving issues across connected WAN edge and peering locations.

Juniper’s AI evolution to benefit HPE

Juniper’s bolstering of its AI-based services highlights the significance of that platform to the vendor and its potentially new parent company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Juniper in its most recent earnings results reported slowing financial results with the only bright spot being the ongoing strong growth of its AI-engorged 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 told 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.”

While HPE CEO Antonio Neri made only a passing mention during his company’s latest earnings call to the pending Juniper acquisition – “we continue to be very enthusiastic about the proposed acquisition” – HPE did recently shed long-held telecom assets so it could focus on an AI-powered future.

This move has HPE handing off some of the assets from its Communications Technology Group (CTG) to India-based managed network services (MNS) provider HCLTech. HPE’s CTG group has been part of the vendor for more than 30 years.

HPE CFO Marie Myers in a blog post noted the “divestiture of assets” included CTG’s systems integration, network applications, video solutions, data intelligence and business support system (BSS), which when aligned “with HCLTech’s highly digitized telecoms services practice will extend HCLTech’s leadership in the telecoms services market.”

“Our priority is to focus on the markets most relevant to customers’ needs across edge, hybrid cloud and [artificial intelligence],” Myers wrote. “Sometimes, this means identifying areas of our business that could be better nurtured and grown through another company or partner.”