Analyst(s): Ron Westfall
Publication Date: December 20, 2024
Juniper Networks is setting a new standard for sustainable networking with its Experience-First Networking approach, combining green power management, intelligent traffic control, and cutting-edge AI-driven innovations. From the energy-efficient Express 5 silicon to advanced AIOps capabilities and Paragon Automation, Juniper’s solutions optimize WAN performance, reduce energy consumption, and lower total cost of ownership. With a strategic focus on sustainability, including leadership in 800GE technology, Juniper empowers organizations to align their networking strategies with their environmental goals, unlocking the full potential of AI-driven innovation across the WAN landscape.
What is Covered in this Article:
- The prominent role that sustainability is playing in wide area network (WAN) decision-making aligns with the global expansion of government sustainability regulations in key regions.
- Why ‘the time is now’ for WAN decision-makers to assign top priority to evaluating the WAN solutions that are purpose-designed to meet the unique challenges achieving sustainability targets in the AI era.
- How the Juniper WAN portfolio directly addresses the unique challenges of enabling organizations to meet the immense challenges of managing data center power demands, particularly across AI workloads, in full accord with fulfilling their sustainability objectives.
The News: Juniper Networks meets WAN sustainability demands through a comprehensive approach that combines innovative technology, energy-efficient hardware, and AI-driven solutions.
Are Wide Area Networks Ready to Drive Sustainability Success?
Analyst Take: Global Trends Affecting Sustainability.
The prominent role that sustainability is playing in WAN decision-making aligns with the global expansion of government sustainability regulations in key regions. Fulfillment of sustainability objectives by organizations can advance and improve society-wide benefits such as environmental preservation, social equity and justice, and economic resilience. Today, organizations need to prioritize the fulfillment of their sustainability goals by implementing solutions that uphold sustainability principles including improving company-wide power and energy efficiencies, expanding renewable energy sources, prioritizing product-level sustainability, and extending product life cycles.
By focusing on sustainability, organizations can diminish waste generation, which decreases the costs associated with equipment disposal. Sustainable practices can help mitigate risks associated with environmental regulations, resource scarcity, and volatile commodity prices. However, to meet ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, some organizations are using tactics such as re-routing their WAN traffic to other countries to take advantage of laxer environmental regulations. This results in a version of greenwashing where organizations find the cheapest and easiest ways to reduce their carbon footprints.
The time is now for WAN decision-makers to assign top priority to evaluating the WAN solutions that are purpose-designed to meet the unique challenges of attaining sustainability targets in the AI era. Specifically, we find that the Juniper WAN portfolio directly addresses the unique challenges of enabling organizations to manage data center power demands, particularly across the prominent role that sustainability is playing in WAN decision-making aligns with the global expansion of government sustainability regulations in key regions. The European Banking Authority (EBA) has proposed draft guidelines for banks to manage ESG risks. These guidelines require banks to integrate ESG risks into their overall risk management frameworks, including credit, market, operational, and liquidity risks.
The European Union (EU) Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) will require strategic and operational changes for businesses globally, focusing on preventing adverse impacts on climate, the environment, as well as human rights. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reinforces the EU’s Non-Financial Reporting Directive, requiring member states to implement obligations starting January 1, 2024.
In the UK, the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority expects firms to make progress on climate risk management, including scenario analysis and risk management that considers climate risk on both sides of their balance sheets. In the Asia-Pacific region, ESG regulations are gathering momentum, although they are nascent relative to the EU. We see that the digital ecosystem, including the networking community, is waiting for agreement on ESG reporting standards that can streamline data collection and produce more quality data for assessing ESG advances.
More organizations, including enterprises, operators, and cloud providers, are pledging to become a net-zero carbon emissions business by 2045 and have set targets in line with the most ambitious aim of the COP21 Paris Agreement, linking its targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
AI’s Integral Role in Shaping Sustainability Outcomes
Alongside these regulatory pressures, we find that major technology advances are driving sustainability-driven decision-making with the latest advancements in AI providing fresh optimism on various sustainability aspects, including environmental impact, ethical considerations, and harnessing innovation for sustainable development. AI technologies and systems themselves are being developed and used responsibly to minimize their environmental impact. For instance, the Sustainable AI movement aims to foster greater environmental integrity throughout the entire life cycle of AI technology by ensuring development is compatible with sustaining environmental resources, economic models, and societal values.
The AI Innovation Grand Challenge launched at the 2023 United Nations climate summit aims to cultivate AI in climate action, especially in developing counties, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, such as ensuring access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy for all, by 2030.
Why Scope 1, 2, and 3 Emissions Matter
Underpinning global sustainability regulations and goals are reporting Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions that are categories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions defined in the GHG Protocol. Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions are classifications used to understand and track GHG emissions. Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by a company. Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat, and cooling. Scope 3 emissions are all other indirect emissions associated with a company’s activities but occurring from sources not owned or controlled by it. Scopes 1 and 2 are mandatory to report for organizations following the GHG protocol, whereas scope 3 is currently voluntary and more difficult to monitor. We anticipate that government regulatory bodies will move toward requiring both publicly listed and private organizations to report Scope 1 and 2 emissions as well as ultimately Scope 3 emissions as a key step in gauging the progress that individual organizations are making toward Net Zero fulfillment.
It’s important to note that for most organizations, Scope 3 emissions represent the largest portion of their carbon footprint, often around 90% (according to normative.io). This is because Scope 3 includes a wide range of activities, many of which can be several steps removed from the company’s direct control but are still integral to its overall value chain. The interesting dynamic here is that Scope 3 emission reductions have bearing on the vendor supplier selection process that can have knock-on effects across key considerations such as market attractiveness, valuations, and share price. The strategic goal is to attain “net zero” emissions that align with carbon neutrality throughout Scopes 1, 2, and 3.
Data centers contribute to Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in varying degrees. For Scope 1 calculations, carbon emissions from company-owned data centers and servers are included. For Scope 2 calculations, carbon emissions that consume a lot of electricity for data transmission and processing are factored. For Scope 1 emissions, data centers represent a small percentage of carbon footprint, typically ranging from 0.2% to 0.5% (according to Data Center Dynamics). In contrast, for Scope 2, this is usually a significant portion of a data center’s emissions due to their high energy consumption, accounting for 31% to 61% of the total carbon footprint. Scope 3 emissions represent 38% to 69% of the total carbon footprint. However, as the data center uses more renewable energy, the percentage of Scope 2 emissions decreases.
Moreover, the EU’s tightening of disclosure rules now requires more than 50,000 listed companies (with 500+ employees or €500 million in annual turnover) to make ESG disclosures in annual reports from 2024 onward. As a result, disclosures of carbon footprint and other environmental impacts can include the energy consumption of their network operations. We identify such requirements leading to the implementation of more energy-efficient network equipment and practices, including the use of renewable energy sources to power WAN infrastructure.
Juniper’s Next-Generation WAN Portfolio Advantages
Silicon Diversity: Linchpin for Sustainability Innovation Breakthrough Across WANs and Data Centers
Juniper has been designing its own ASICs since 1996. The company’s silicon strategy has long been a differentiator. We see Juniper continuing to execute this strategy, as well as the industry breakthroughs in scale and throughput they represent now and into the future. The latest versions of their customer silicon include the seventh generation of Trio ASIC for the MX line of high-service scale routers and the fifth generation of Express ASIC for the PTX line of 100G, 400G, and 800G optimized routers for enterprise, service providers, and cloud networks. Both ASICs deliver enhanced traffic insights, hardware-based sampling, and the horsepower bandwidth-intensive routing applications required with up to 16M IPv4/IPv6 routes and 8M counters in a sustainable chiplet-based architecture.
The Express 5 ASIC is Juniper’s highest radix deep-buffer ASIC to date, and it enables the construction of a wide range of 100G/400G/800G systems, starting from 14.4T fixed-form factor routers to high-capacity petabit routing and switching platforms, with more than twice the power efficiency gains compared to the previous generation. The products based on Express 5 are optimized for the new high-speed 400G and 800G transceivers with 112G electrical interfaces. These transceivers offer a more than 40% power consumption reduction compared to the first generation of 56G optics. Express 5’s innovative design lends itself to single-chip, Ethernet-only systems and multi-chip, fabric-based systems with impressive densities and power optimization features, such as the ability to deactivate internal componentry when idle.
The Trio ASIC-based MX Series of routing platforms delivers breakthrough capabilities across system capacity, density, security, and performance metrics with built-in longevity integral to advancing customer digital transformation. Specifically, the 7nm-based Trio 6 platform, on average, exceeds 70% in power and space efficiency compared to its industry-leading Trio predecessors. Additionally, the use of merchant silicon enables the ACX7000 family to provide high-performance at a reduced cost, facilitating more efficient network scaling for operators.
The ACX Series Routers directly fulfill the energy efficiency and sustainability demands across metro access, aggregation, and data center implementations underpinned by MEF 3.0 compliance and support of 5G high-precision timing and synchronization capabilities. The ACX Series platform, with its compact design and energy efficiency, provides up to 64% more space efficiency and up to 77% less power consumption. The latest generation of ACX Series routers are engineered for longevity, providing up to 12 years of lifespan.
The Green Agility of Juniper Power Management
In addition, Juniper Junos power management is an essential feature across its WAN portfolio that helps ensure efficient and reliable operation. It allows administrators to configure power priorities for line cards, manage power supply redundancy, and use power resources optimally. The solution reduces power consumption through dynamic power management capabilities. This feature allows for better use of the power available in the power entry module (PEM) by ensuring that a new hardware component is only powered on if there is sufficient power available in the PEM to meet the worst-case power requirement for that component.
For telemetry, Juniper Telemetry Interface (JTI) serves as an agile tool for network monitoring and performance management. Specifically, JTI enables real-time performance monitoring by streaming data from network elements to a performance management system. Network administrators can measure trends in link and node utilization, allowing them to swiftly address issues such as network congestion. Also, JTI overcomes the limitations of periodic polling using traditional SNMP and CLI models by using a push model that eliminates the need for polling, delivering data asynchronously and making it highly scalable.
Juniper’s Mist AI technology combines AI, machine learning, and data science techniques to optimize user experience and streamline operations across multiple domains. For WAN applications, Mist AI delivers built-in benefits such as simplified WAN operations, boosts visibility into end-user experiences, and reduces mean time to repair. This aids sustainability in areas such as minimizing site visits by up to 85% and strengthening the alignment of operations with power-saving techniques. Augmenting Juniper’s Mist AI proposition is the breakthrough AI-driven Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) that optimizes both user and operational experiences through proactive actions and self-driving network operations. Marvis uses natural language conversational interfaces to strengthen guidance to WAN implementations including energy efficiency measures.
Looking Ahead
Overall, we believe Juniper offers the best-in-class solutions essential to success for enlisting the WAN in fulfilling organization-wide sustainability objectives. Juniper’s Experience-First Networking value proposition also encompassing green power management and intelligent traffic control includes competitive advantages that are must-haves for cloud, operator, and enterprise decision-makers to prioritize in their selection and adoption processes.
AI-Native Networking Platform provides the comprehensive AIOps capabilities key to improving WAN performance throughout the end user, applications, and network domain continuum by minimizing the potential for network outages and application downtime. By expanding its portfolio’s AIOps and VNA capabilities with integrated digital experience twinning in tandem with new additions to its AI Data Center solutions, Juniper enables organizations to unleash the potential of AI-driven innovation across their WAN implementations.
Juniper’s silicon development prowess including the debut of Express 5 silicon raises the bar for energy-efficient networking performance. The new PTX platforms are built on optimized design using fewer and more efficient silicon chips as well as Junos power management capabilities and energy-efficient chassis designs. Plus, PTX solutions enable Juniper Paragon Automation intelligent automation capabilities to improve system efficiencies and reduce TCO. Juniper reinforces its competitive advantages through the strategic commitment to ensure solutions such as 800GE are at the vanguard of sustainability. Organizations need to prioritize the WAN as vital to advancing their sustainability journeys.
To learn more, you can participate in the on-demand webinar More Wide Area Networks: Pushing the Boundaries of Sustainability in Networking and read the white paper More Wide Area Networks: A New Vista for Sustainability Success.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other Insights from The Futurum Group:
More Wide Area Networks: A New Vista for Sustainability Success
Juniper Debuts Ops4AI and JVDs to Spur Ecosystem-wide Adoption of AI
HPE’s Game-Changing $14 Billion Acquisition of Juniper
Author Information
Ron is an experienced, customer-focused research expert and analyst, with over 20 years of experience in the digital and IT transformation markets, working with businesses to drive consistent revenue and sales growth.
He is a recognized authority at tracking the evolution of and identifying the key disruptive trends within the service enablement ecosystem, including a wide range of topics across software and services, infrastructure, 5G communications, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics, security, cloud computing, revenue management, and regulatory issues.
Prior to his work with The Futurum Group, Ron worked with GlobalData Technology creating syndicated and custom research across a wide variety of technical fields. His work with Current Analysis focused on the broadband and service provider infrastructure markets.
Ron holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy from University of Nevada — Las Vegas and a Bachelor of Arts in political science/government from William and Mary.