The Race To Zero Latency – Our Relationship with NYSE Euronext and a Vision for Cloud Computing

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On Wednesday, Juniper Networks and NYSE Euronext made a significant announcement on our plans to work together to design a state-of-the-art, ultra-low latency core network for NYSE Euronext's new consolidated global data centers.  These new data centers will be the primary operational infrastructure supporting several billions daily transactions across diverse asset classes and geographies, and will be instrumental in NYSE Euronext's efforts to consolidate the total number of global data centers from ten to four. 

The new facilities plan to utilize Juniper's Data Center Infrastructure Solutions and advanced data center fabric technology. Expected to be operational in 2010, they will provide greater network scale and efficiency and are being designed to support an unprecedented internal latency of 50 microseconds roundtrip - a reduction by a factor of three. Every microsecond we can shave off that roundtrip will give NYSE Euronext a competitive advantage, and reduce potential losses for their customers by shortening the time between an order placement and execution.  You can learn more about our relationship in this video.

But today's announcement is more than just how Juniper and NYSE Euronext are working today - it's about how Juniper will work with customers in the future to drive towards the goal of a scalable network with near-zero latency.  And that work will be based on both our Stratus Project and our vision for cloud computing.

That vision is defined by the ability of technology enabled services to be delivered to a set of customers from a set of providers over the network.  The infrastructure that these components run on must be shared across multiple applications, users, departments or businesses to achieve economies of scale.  That sharing may occur in private, public or hybrid cloud architectures.

A robust infrastructure is needed to be able to produce and deliver these services.  Cloud Infrastructure serves two primary functions.  1)  Service Production where applications and services are developed, deployed, provisioned and managed in data centers that serve as the "engine room" of the cloud and 2) Service Delivery where applications and services are delivered, accessed, and shared by users via a global wide area network.

Given the need to drive economies of scale, Cloud Infrastructure places a premium on the networks involved.  And what is needed is a High-Performance-Network that is reliable, secure, fast and scalable while remaining simple. Within cloud computing, networking plays a vital role as the backbone for both the data center.  Simply put:  Without the network, there is no cloud.

Since cloud computing is not an overnight move, we feel that companies should explore several steps to pursue their own cloud-like infrastructure:

1)      Services Production - Networking the Data Center: Today, most data centers have three or more layers of switching- which increases network complexity and latency.  Stratus is being designed to achieve the vision of a flat, single-tier, non-blocking converged data center fabric that will provide the simplicity of a single switch, yet scale across even the largest cloud data centers

2)      Services Delivery - Powering the Global Network: The network must dynamically adjust resources to meet the needs of traffic volume, prioritizing users and applications while maintaining control and manageability.  Juniper's routing portfolio has reliably connected the world's largest networks with network virtualization, carrier-class reliability intelligent services and application and user level awareness

3)      Security Infrastructure - Securing the Cloud: Data flows within and between clouds, and users, must be secured.  Juniper offers a distributed suite of protections operating at key points of vulnerability and at layers where network-based security adds to the quality and integrity of the services being delivered. 

Juniper is uniquely qualified to provide the network infrastructure for cloud computing, based on our experience across service provider and data center networks, depth of innovation across silicon, system and software and ability to tackle the tough challenges at the economies of scale involved in cloud computing.  Our announcement today with NYSE Euronext is a nice validation of our strategy.

We've released a paper on our cloud computing capabilities; you can find it at http://www.juniper.net/us/en/local/pdf/editorial/3200004-en.pdf

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Thanks.