Today marks a very special day for me at Juniper. A brand new product line that I’ve managed from the very beginning has been announced. The NFX250 is a unique platform that actualizes the concepts of Network Functions Virtualization we’ve all heard so much about, but hardly see encompassed in an end-to-end solution. The NFX250 is a Distributed Cloud CPE that Managed Services Providers (MSPs) and Distributed Enterprises can use to dramatically reduce the time and cost to deploy network functions to sites.

Previously, MSPs would offer services by performing a truck roll of appliances, such as firewalls, routers, WAN Optimizers, Analytics Engines, WLAN Controllers, etc to their customers’ sites. This would take months, if not years, for several reasons: the appliances would need to be stocked at the distribution centers of the MSP, manually configured, and then shipped to each site, often in the hundreds or thousands. This would also be a highly complex series of operations prone to errors. At the sites, the appliances, each with their unique requirements, would need to be physically cabled and hard-chained. It also meant that if an end customer was not satisfied with a particular vendor, and had hundreds or thousands of sites, they were stuck because of they locked in.

Enter the NFX250, which leverages x86 chipset and virtualization technologies in addition to best-in-class switching performance from Juniper. Now all these functions can be consolidate on to a single hardware platform. With a 6-core Xeon-D processor, the NFX250 platform is able to consolidate up to 8 services Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) simultaneously. With a dedicated Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) in the Data Path, it is also able to provide wire-speed switching on 10 LAN ports.

As I mentioned, the NFX250 is part of an end-to-end solution, in which Contrail Service Orchestration takes the center stage. A customer can activate the CPE by simply connecting to the Network Service Activator component of Contrail Service Orchestration. This ensures that the CPE downloads its image and configuration in a secure manner. It makes use of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to verify that the CPE left the factory and reached the customer without being tampered with. Moreover, it blocks BIOS implants by running checks on the BIOS and by ensuring that the CPE boots with an image that wasn’t modified.

Contrail Service Orchestration handles the VNF lifecycle management. With a Network Service Designer application for network architects to define services, and separate Administrator and Customer Self-Service portals for selecting services, the end-to-end solution offers simple, secure, and flexible means to deploy functions within minutes.

I truly believe this CPE will revolutionize the industry for Managed Service Providers as well as large to mid-sized Enterprises. What I find especially incredible is the frenetic pace of innovation at Juniper. I write these words less than a year after I joined the company, during which time I have brought this hardware platform from pre-concept to market. It has been a crazy hectic year for me with a bright horizon and packed roadmap ahead. I am extremely proud to have been behind the wheel of the NFX250.