Juniper Networks, the industry leader in network innovation, and Canonical, the leading provider of services for Ubuntu deployments in the enterprise, today announced an expansion of their global partnership with a co-developed carrier-grade, OpenStack software solution that will enable service providers to virtualize core networks and network functions for increased performance, scale and reliability. Juniper will also provide complete service support for Canonical’s Ubuntu Server operating system (OS) and Ubuntu OpenStack as part of Juniper Networks Contrail Cloud.

Service providers are working to profitably address growing end-user demand for data capacity while more quickly delivering new, innovative services to subscribers. To accomplish this, carriers are continually looking to cloud platforms to make their infrastructure more agile and automated to support these goals. By combining Juniper Networks’ expertise in cloud network offerings for telecommunications customers with Canonical’s OpenStack and open source leadership, Canonical and Juniper are providing open, scalable, cost-effective, and carrier-grade cloud solutions on which carriers can build a virtualized IP platform and support network functions virtualization (NFV).

OpenStack has emerged as a preferred open-source cloud management platform based on its openness, interoperability, flexibility and large highly active community of users, developers and vendors. It has also established itself as the platform of choice for NFV workloads. According to the most recent OpenStack Foundation global survey, Ubuntu is the most popular host and guest operating system for OpenStack, with more than half of all OpenStack instances running Ubuntu, and 70 percent of the Public Cloud Guest operating system market.

Contrail Networking’s connection with Ubuntu Server OS and Ubuntu OpenStack as the default platform for cloud deployments began with Juniper Networks and the OpenContrail project participating in Canonical’s OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL), an integration lab in which Canonical tests its cloud partners’ products in Ubuntu OpenStack configurations, for automated testing of Contrail with Ubuntu OpenStack. The addition of the joint carrier-grade OpenStack solution will leverage and expand on OIL to provide enhanced testing to ensure the solution meets the demanding needs of carriers.

News Highlights:

• Juniper Networks and Canonical have developed Contrail Cloud Platform, a joint carrier-grade OpenStack solution for cloud and converged NFV infrastructure that now integrates Contrail Networking with Canonical’s Ubuntu OpenStack and Ubuntu Server OS for enhanced performance, scale and reliability.
• Juniper Networks is selling and fully supporting Contrail Cloud Platform deployments in coordination with Canonical support for all Ubuntu OS and Ubuntu OpenStack components.
• Juniper Networks and Canonical will collaborate and coordinate product development, engineering, marketing and upstream contributions to continue to expand an open and functioning OpenStack ecosystem for service providers to deliver cloud and NFV solutions.
• As part of the joint agreement, Juniper Networks and Canonical will work with customers to incorporate service provider requirements into OpenStack, NFV and SDN open source projects.
• Juniper Networks continues to participate in Canonical’s OIL with Contrail for automated testing against Ubuntu OpenStack.