Earlier this year, we started talking about our vision for the enterprise campus network. This vision has today come to life as part of a solution and portfolio of products that we call “Simply Connected.” Fundamentally, the Simply Connected portfolio is a set of new and existing wireless, switching and security products that work together to simplify the wired and wireless enterprise campus network. Simply Connected is also a tailor made solution—customers can pick the products to match their needs and environment.
IT managers have long been struggling with the connectivity, mobility, security and manageability issues caused by more and more personal devices being used to access the corporate network. Today, Juniper gives them a way to secure and manage those devices, extending right through to centralized policy enforcement and monitoring. As we know, smartphones and mobile devices only connect via wireless; there is no RJ-45 jack on my iPhone or iPad. At the same time, wired still plays an important role in delivering high performance, speed and reliability. What’s needed is a balance between the two—a shift that re-architects smaller, higher performance wired networks designed for wireless access as well as wired non-compute devices such as surveillance and video conferencing.
What’s also needed is a way for both corporate-owned and personally owned devices to securely access the corporate network and corporate applications. This on ramp has to be scalable, it has to be flexible, and it must provide users with the same secure access regardless of the device. A number of fundamental paradigms for business application access must change to achieve a Simply Connected enterprise. We think this can be boiled down into four architectural principles:
- Assume the primary mode of access is wireless
- Simplify the wired network
- Provide a secure device-agnostic connection
- Build one general purpose network for all applications
These principles have ramifications for the way campus networks are designed. The term we use to describe this architecture is “wired-less.” This means two things: first, that you will need more wireless access than wired; and second, that you will want fewer wires to manage. ”Wired-less” is about having a simpler campus network. While wired ports will always be required, a continuously increasing number of devices and wires to manage is not.
What else do you need to get Simply Connected? One of the key ingredients is managing security. You have to move from having IT provision company owned devices to a model where security is administered by the user. The secret to scaling is to have users provision themselves, and our Junos Pulse client—available as a free download—is the secret ingredient. The IT department does not have to provision user devices; the users do it themselves. If I get a new Google device, for instance, the IT department does not need to provision it—I do. All policies are enforced by my user credentials, so I get the same security whether I am connected via a wired port on my company-owned PC or in the airport with my personal phone or tablet.
Juniper’s goal for the campus is for everyone to be Simply Connected. Simple from the user perspective and simple from the IT department’s point of view. Juniper’s goal is to bring it all together for our customers in a simple way.
If being Simply Connected sounds appealing to you, click here to check out our brochure which describes this vision for the campus in greater detail, along with the Juniper products that make this vision a reality.
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