Juniper Virtual Summit – Juniper’s SD-Branch with Mist AI Gives Managed Service Providers New Opportunities to Extend Software-defined Management and Control Deeper into the Enterprise Branch

​During the ‘Juniper Virtual Summit – Networks for the New Era’, June 10, 2020; Juniper outlined its Managed SD-Branch proposition. The service extends the features and benefits of SD-WAN more deeply into the enterprise branch locations and adds a layer of Mist AI to provide actionable insights and proactively solve any branch network problems. 

ANALYST OPINION 
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• Juniper’s service provider clients have an opportunity to grow ARPU with existing enterprise SD-WAN clients by extending SD-based service deeper into the branch beyond the WAN demarcation point. Any progress creates stickiness and gives new upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and new revenue streams for service providers. 
• Micro services cloud architecture allows the network to continually improve and software updates are automatic.
• Service providers and users can leverage AI to simply ask ‘what is wrong with my network?’ (MARVIS query); and subsequently get to the Root Cause rapidly.
• A new architecture offers customers Service Levels Expectation– or SLE. The Juniper platform offers MSPs a dashboard for monitoring SLEs across multiple sites and in a multi-tenanted platform. 
• The Mist AI-driven platform extends branch performance visibility to the service provider. This gives the SP the tools that it needs to understand why, for example, the user is having difficulty connecting to the Wi-Fi.

PERSPECTIVE

Typically, managed SD-WAN service providers do not have much visibility and control over what happens in terms of user experience with the enterprise network beyond the WAN demarcation point. In other words, if an end user is having trouble with connecting to the office Wi-Fi network, or an Ethernet switch, then there is little that the service provider can do. 

AN AGE-OLD ENTERPRISE PROBLEM: LARGE QUANTITIES OF LEGACY BRANCH TELECOM EQUIPMENT

There remains a considerable amount of legacy LAN technology out there in service in the field today. Enterprises for example are still relying on old WLAN equipment and proprietary premises-based software. This is inefficient and provides managed SD-WAN providers with an opportunity to take over branch networking equipment and service management with a more technically superior and elegant SD-Branch managed offering that brings agility, cost-effectiveness, and cost-savings to the platform in a similar way that SD-WAN provides such advantages. 
Assuming the enterprise client is satisfied with their SD-WAN technology, the SD-WAN can continue to handle application-aware analytics and dynamic routing, and then hand over to the SD-Branch. This gives end users new levels of agility and operational efficiencies for corporate branch office networking. 

JUNIPER’S MANAGED SD-BRANCH TAKES ADVANTAGE OF MIST AI

• Service providers can apply an AI-driven Managed SD-Branch solution to take branch management hassles off the enterprise’s hands. An MSP can also then point out a host of benefits beyond reduced hassle that derive from a software-defined and cloud-based way to monitor, manage, and control all the wired and wireless connectivity assets inside the branch environment.
• Juniper recognizes that the traditional branch environment is ripe and ready for adopting a new and different software-defined and AI-powered architecture that gives agility, flexibility, adaptability and visibility. 
• Juniper’s Mist AI platform is a strong differentiator in manged SD-Branch solutions. Few competitors can match the vendor’s AI platform feature list, which include for example the natural query language application MARVIS.  Leveraging AI and Machine Learning in an SD-Branch solution improves service levels and user experience. 

​LOWERING OPEX

• Operational simplicity is key objective for both MSPs and their enterprise customers. The Juniper SD-Branch and Mist AI platform leverage a micro services cloud, so that the network can evolve quickly and have high levels of uptime and availability. Over time this produces costs savings on the OPEX side. 
• Service providers need to position a managed Wi-Fi solution’s many advantages over owned-Wi-Fi in terms of the better service at lower cost ratio. With traditional Wi-fi, the cost was simply transferred from internal IT to an MSP. With AI-driven Wi-Fi, LAN and SD-WAN, the MSP can offer a much better service keeping an optimized cost. 
• Service providers are in a better position than private enterprise to activate more advanced and powerful Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) capabilities. This opens opportunities for the enterprise to take advantage of innovative services, such as location services, and contact tracing. 

CONCLUSIONS

• Once a managed SD-WAN service provider can understand how each individual user is experiencing the network within the branch, it can then offer the Juniper Managed SD-Branch to extend a self-driving network that learns on an ongoing basis what the common branch issues are, learn how issues can be fixed, and even proactively fix issues. 
• Setting a baseline for network branch performance and harnessing the power of the Juniper Mist AI platform will ultimately drive OPEX savings for enterprise.
• Combining SD-WAN with a Managed SD-Branch is a holistic network strategy that should appeal to enterprises that want to take advantage of fully managed software-defined services, including within their office branch sites.
• The Managed SD-Branch spans all the LAN network equipment namely: the Wi-Fi, Ethernet switching, WAN and eventually this should extend outwards into the corporate HQ/data center and cloud-based applications accessed on any Internet breakouts.