Dr. Sally Eaves Interviews Raj Yavatkar, CTO Juniper Networks, on Innovation for Service Providers

0:00 [Music]

0:10 welcome to tomorrow's tech today

0:13 bringing you the latest in technology

0:15 talent and transformational change with

0:18 me your host professor sally eaves

0:25 and in today's special episode i'm

0:27 delighted to be joined by raj avecar cto

0:30 of juniper networks we're discussing all

0:32 things emerging industry trends the key

0:35 industry developments for service

0:37 providers to focus on today

0:39 so raj welcome to the show great to

0:41 speak to you again

0:42 thank you and thank you for having me

0:45 oh my absolute pleasure i think probably

0:47 the best place to start is just to

0:49 reflect on obviously we were both

0:50 together at mwc 2022 really recently and

0:54 if we reflect on maybe that experience

0:55 to start off with so we have these

0:57 things coming together didn't we in

0:58 terms of you know the latest technology

1:00 trends this kind of trajectory of

1:02 innovation going forward very much front

1:04 of mind for both of us and for me i

1:06 found that to be what i like to call the

1:08 age of convergence so we have things

1:09 like 5g iot edge cloud ai etcetera you

1:13 know coming together it's their

1:14 integration rather than as a separate

1:16 parts i'd love you to get your take on

1:18 that and what other trends from the

1:20 event resonated most for you

1:22 uh sure i think that you said it likely

1:24 that convergence is not just happening

1:27 but now it was very evident on the

1:30 exhibit floor as you went around

1:33 so for example i saw first-time

1:35 applications

1:37 for iot smart iot and h computing which

1:40 are different than the

1:41 canonical video

1:44 analytics kind of applications people

1:46 have been showing off for multiple years

1:48 the second one i noticed is that

1:51 the aura which is the 5g revolution

1:54 it's not a question of if but it's a

1:56 question of when when multiple operators

1:59 including some of the topmost

2:01 operators in europe mentioned that they

2:03 are into field trials they are starting

2:05 field trials and they will go into

2:06 commercial deployments next year so it

2:09 looks like that's another big change for

2:11 me right and the third one is that i

2:13 think in terms of the ecosystem

2:15 lots of new application developers

2:17 targeting edge computing

2:20 oran based applications smart iot those

2:23 kind of things so that's a thriving

2:25 ecosystem that i noticed this time

2:28 absolutely i totally agree with that and

2:30 i think the power of collaboration as

2:32 well definitely struck me as really

2:34 being center stages partnerships and

2:36 co-creation i love that and also things

2:38 like sustainability and i'll come back

2:39 to a couple of those a bit later on if i

2:41 may but you mentioned there about oran

2:43 and you're absolutely right there was an

2:45 amazing session in the dedicated forum i

2:47 really enjoyed that and i'd love to

2:49 drill in a little bit more about what

2:50 you're seeing as some of the key

2:52 opportunities and also obviously

2:53 acknowledging new challenges along the

2:54 way as well

2:56 maybe as one example of that and again

2:58 kind of got that theme of the power of

2:59 partnership if you could share a bit

3:01 more about what you've announced with

3:02 vodafone and parallel wireless as well

3:04 be great to hear more about that use

3:06 case trial

3:07 that's right i think the success of

3:08 orang that which is telcos are really

3:10 pushing to open up the ecosystem so that

3:12 they can go away both from traditional

3:15 architecture which is vertically

3:16 integrated but also the traditional

3:18 supply chain right traditional vendors

3:20 that are used to now number two vendors

3:22 or three vendors so i think the success

3:24 of that is going to

3:26 mainly depend on partnerships and

3:28 collaboration in an open ecosystem

3:31 so what we did at the vodafone field

3:32 trials now is that we are partnering

3:34 with parallel wireless because our focus

3:37 is not on regaining radio expertise that

3:40 we leave it to other players but we want

3:42 to make sure that we become part of the

3:44 ecosystem providing valuable pieces such

3:47 as run intelligence controller which is

3:49 like an operating system for the

3:51 landlord and also provide an open

3:53 ecosystem using an sdk so anyone can

3:55 develop applications and that will lead

3:57 to service agility because traditionally

4:00 the operators cannot introduce a new

4:02 service without waiting for three to six

4:03 months because they have to wait for

4:05 traditional vendor to enable it

4:07 with this kind of open ecosystem where

4:09 partners are collaborating you can

4:11 increase service agility because anyone

4:13 can introduce a new application very

4:15 quickly so that's another exciting part

4:19 i love that i love that and so many

4:21 benefits as well because it were

4:23 affecting by kind of scaling up this

4:25 trajectory you know reducing things

4:27 around integration challenges improving

4:29 resiliency um tackling automation

4:31 etcetera as well also personalization of

4:33 user experiences there's so many

4:35 examples isn't there in terms of tco

4:38 yeah so i think the automation is key as

4:40 you said right because if you are going

4:42 to have multiple players

4:44 supplying multiple pieces somebody has

4:46 to integrate them and make sure they are

4:48 resilient and they meet the telco

4:50 criteria for reliable delivery so

4:53 automation plays a very key role and

4:55 that's where we are investing in making

4:57 sure we provide automation for each

4:59 class many h clouds which are going to

5:01 be

5:02 thousands of them in a densely populated

5:04 area you have to make sure the whole

5:06 stack can be automatically integrated

5:08 and not lose any reliability component

5:11 the other is personalized experience

5:12 like you said it's all about delivering

5:15 consumer content which can lead to

5:17 personalized experience and you can

5:18 charge for that because one of the

5:20 challenges with 5g is that you do not

5:23 service providers do not want to stay

5:25 being just providing basic connectivity

5:27 provider with all this investment in

5:29 spectrum and infrastructure they have to

5:30 be able to monetize

5:32 i do see there is an opportunity to

5:34 deliver personalized experiences because

5:36 of 5g's ultra reliable low latency

5:38 character and massive machine to machine

5:41 communication with high bandwidth and so

5:42 on yeah

5:44 absolutely and i'll send some links as

5:46 well when we publicize the episode

5:48 there's some great new research has just

5:50 come out as well they talked about it at

5:52 the event gsma in particular um but

5:54 really bringing to the floor the new

5:55 value of the new use cases to be created

5:57 and yet to be created for that matter as

5:59 well so very much a shared value

6:00 proposition so we definitely put some

6:02 links in for that as well i think we are

6:03 at an inflection point similar to what

6:05 happened with the iphone app store when

6:07 the iphone app store was introduced it

6:10 really opened up

6:12 the applications use cases that we had

6:14 not even imagined before using a

6:16 smartphone i think which similar thing

6:18 is possible with 5g if we enable the

6:20 ecosystem

6:22 and open ecosystem

6:24 absolutely it's a great example there

6:26 yeah you touched on it earlier as well

6:28 with the developer ecosystem x apps r

6:30 apps etc as well so really kind of

6:32 bringing forward this kind of virtual

6:34 circle of innovation that's really

6:36 transforming the value chain as well i

6:37 think that the iphone app store moment

6:39 is a great example to kind of translate

6:41 that to the audience as well so i love

6:43 that that's fantastic

6:44 and i wonder as well if we could bring

6:46 to life another of the partnerships that

6:48 we saw at mwc so the partnership with

6:50 intel for example as well so i had the

6:52 pleasure to experience some of those

6:54 demonstrations first hand but i wonder

6:56 if you could bring that to life some of

6:57 the announcements there as well for the

6:59 audience today

7:00 sure i think intel traditionally has

7:02 always invested in horizontal ecosystems

7:05 because they want to enable chip cells

7:07 by creating as

7:09 broad and as horizontal ecosystem as

7:11 possible so we took advantage of that by

7:13 partnering with them

7:17 which is a sort of horizontal platform

7:19 with element l2 software that they

7:21 provide freely to anyone we're building

7:23 upon that to integrate our containerized

7:26 routing stacks so we created virtualized

7:28 cells across

7:30 for all of japanese install uh instances

7:33 will be powered by our cloud native

7:35 router similar thing we are taking to

7:37 the oracle we are taking the flexsign

7:38 platform integrating with our rig ran

7:41 intelligence controller some of the x

7:43 apps coming from us from third parties

7:45 like cohere and intel and all of that

7:48 together can be delivered as a platform

7:50 so i'm really excited about that

7:51 partnership

7:52 i love that too exactly para partnership

7:55 is the way forward i love that fantastic

7:57 and i'm going to go on to another kind

7:59 of this innovation trajectory we're

8:01 talking about today and power

8:02 convergence again so we go into a

8:05 different example of that so one one

8:06 other one that struck me as well is and

8:08 what we're seeing with infrastructure

8:10 spending at the moment so the us would

8:12 be a great example of this also

8:13 countries like germany as well really

8:15 prioritizing fiber connectivity so that

8:18 investment and fiber-based wildlife

8:19 connectivity very much accelerating in

8:22 those two countries in particular but

8:23 many others as well but also at the time

8:25 same time we're seeing 5g expanding with

8:28 mobile bandwidth capacity and again

8:30 going back to use cases enabling new

8:32 ones as well so the metro is a place

8:34 where all this connectivity is

8:36 converging we've got this new

8:37 distributed architecture and all this is

8:39 coming together with massive scalable ip

8:42 fabric too so what if we could drill

8:43 into that a bit more and really bring to

8:45 life the opportunity but equally the

8:47 risks as well with this new trend and

8:48 how you overcome that

8:50 oh thank you i think you said it well

8:52 the convergence of wire line and

8:54 wireless is happening in the metro so

8:56 it's good that fiber connectivity is

8:58 increasing even in u.s some of the

9:00 operators are massively spending the new

9:02 biden infrastructure bail is also going

9:04 to expand that to rural areas plus 5g

9:07 brings very high bandwidth and all of

9:08 that comes together in metro

9:10 and that creates a new opportunity

9:12 because what's happening in the metro is

9:14 that you traditionally use the ring

9:16 architecture with hierarchical routing

9:19 that doesn't work very well when you

9:20 have to have a very distributed

9:22 architecture to support this convergence

9:24 happening right multiple aggregation

9:26 points each one of them look like many

9:28 edge clouds they all have to be

9:30 connected together with a massively

9:32 scalable ip family and that's where

9:34 juniper comes in we are one of the best

9:36 ip fabric routing company so we're

9:39 taking advantage of that by introducing

9:41 a new metro cloud platform

9:44 platform we call it cloud metro

9:46 portfolio which allows you to use ip

9:49 fabric but also have aggregation points

9:51 where you can use

9:53 the distributed architecture very

9:54 disaggregated architecture so our acx is

9:57 our products are great for aggregation

9:58 points then of course we have a mx and

10:01 ptx series of routers which are great

10:03 for massively scalable ip fabric

10:05 then we also

10:06 addressed the 5g connectivity from front

10:09 hall to mid hall to backhaul by

10:11 introducing virtualized cell set router

10:13 which is purely based on one ux 86

10:15 servers and our software so if you all

10:18 add up that together and to add to add

10:20 our paragon automation suite

10:22 which tries to address the all the

10:25 aspects of the ip fabric network

10:27 starting from design capacity planning

10:30 day zero day one day to operations

10:32 automating all of that and collecting

10:34 data telemetry from the network which we

10:37 can fit into our machine learning models

10:39 and engines so we can create this

10:40 virtuous sort of a cycle of the feedback

10:44 to fit into the automation to optimize

10:46 the network so we're really excited

10:48 about that

10:49 i love that i love the end to end aspect

10:52 of that and

10:53 i was going to ask you about you know

10:54 role of disaggregation cloud native

10:56 architecture but he literally went

10:58 around looking at every aspect that's

11:00 been covered there so i i think you've

11:02 already answered that already which is

11:03 amazing i love i love how you brought

11:04 back to life and again really

11:06 emphasizing this holistic but integrated

11:09 take and supporting all these different

11:10 elements of that innovation which is

11:11 brilliant and again you mentioned about

11:13 mini edge clouds to support ot

11:15 aggregation as well and i'd love to just

11:18 touch on some of those use cases again

11:19 i'd love to bring it to life for the

11:20 audience so things like cloud gaming vr

11:23 ar etcetera as well so this is really

11:26 exciting and i just wanted if we could

11:27 bring you touched on juniper already but

11:29 just broadly as well for the sector what

11:31 role do you see as telcos as under the

11:33 hub of the wheel for enabling all of

11:34 this

11:35 yeah so i think uh the mini edge clouds

11:38 are aggregation points as well as the

11:40 very good platforms for delivering

11:42 services which are latency led sensitive

11:44 the telcos on the other hand have a

11:46 challenge how do they monetize how do

11:48 they get people to pay for more than

11:50 just basic connectivity that they did

11:51 with 4g

11:53 i look at gen z and millennials my

11:56 daughter or that generation

11:58 they are willing to pay for additional

12:00 experiences because they grew up in a

12:02 more of a

12:03 social media environment so imagine

12:05 going to nfl stadium you're watching

12:07 again and at the same time you get

12:09 personalized content delivered

12:11 right or you're in concert and you're

12:13 also getting personalized content about

12:15 your favorite stars with artists and all

12:18 all that plus uh metaphors based gaming

12:21 metaverse based experiences can be

12:24 delivered at the edge of the network

12:27 using many edge clouds and all those

12:30 applications require not just edge

12:32 computing but 5g connectivity with the

12:34 ultra reliable low latency and that can

12:36 be monetized people are used to paying

12:38 for those kind of things especially the

12:39 younger generations so i'm really think

12:41 that there are applications now coming

12:43 to four which will justify telcos

12:46 spending but also allow them to monetize

12:48 it

12:50 i love that and and if you've prompted

12:51 something else there which again i would

12:53 say gen z or jen zed is is kind of

12:56 leading the way on so you're absolutely

12:58 right that that different expectations

13:00 and behaviors and that demand for

13:01 personalization of experience and i'd

13:03 love to see that with my football team

13:04 as well with southampton so i'll put a

13:06 little shout out for them there as well

13:07 but you're right you're you're willing

13:08 to do more to get that that experience

13:11 um but also i think they're leading the

13:12 way in another area as well in terms of

13:14 this kind of values alignment and and

13:16 pushing forward in areas like

13:18 sustainability for example the sdgs more

13:20 broadly as well and again i see this

13:22 sector it's absolutely vital for the hub

13:24 of the will so to speak in labeling

13:26 change for social impact as well as

13:28 business impact and bringing that

13:29 together so just love to kind of round

13:31 our conversation on an area that's so

13:33 close to heart i know for both of us so

13:35 could you tell more about juniper's

13:36 commitment to sustainability what you're

13:38 doing to help make networking more

13:40 sustainable because i think there's a

13:41 really great leadership point i think

13:43 can inspire other people to do the same

13:44 and build that contagion of change

13:47 absolutely we have both a business

13:49 ethical and social responsibility to

13:51 lead the way

13:52 so one of the things we have done

13:53 recently we announced that will be

13:55 carbon neutral in next two three years

13:57 right either operation or what we do

13:59 with our business but more importantly

14:01 our products we are focusing on making

14:03 them more sustainable we make custom

14:05 chips for our routers

14:07 they save as much as 40

14:09 power compared to the merchant silicon

14:12 when it comes to delivering products and

14:14 these are the routers

14:16 and

14:17 switches that go into massive networks

14:20 the third part we are doing is that

14:22 which effort has started with some other

14:24 ctos in the industry which is really

14:26 let's look at the network protocol start

14:29 many years we have not looked at how to

14:31 optimize that for energy efficiency

14:34 so i'll give a simple example a lot of

14:36 people are now writing applications in

14:37 micro services these micro services

14:40 communicate a lot

14:42 but you could optimize them for energy

14:44 efficiencies in at least two ways one

14:47 you don't have to optimize each micro

14:49 service for highest performance there's

14:51 a good enough performance you reach

14:52 after that you should look at energy

14:54 efficiency

14:55 do i really want to use more compute

14:57 more communication

14:59 to get more performance when it doesn't

15:01 matter the second thing when you're

15:03 communicating anytime the packet goes

15:05 over the network or ethernet interface

15:07 it consumes more energy but if you

15:09 happen to notice that some micro service

15:11 sizes are communicating more frequently

15:14 you can co-locate them on the same

15:16 physical core or virtual core and

15:17 reducing the amount of energy used so

15:19 there are lots of these ideas and i want

15:21 to create an industry standard around it

15:24 so we create a benchmark and that

15:25 benchmark can be measured all of us

15:28 right in the industry can measuring

15:30 start measuring our products against

15:32 those sustainability indices so i

15:34 started the effort with some other uh

15:36 ctos and we'll go public with that soon

15:38 as a sort of industry working

15:41 i love that that is amazing again it's

15:43 that power of industry coming together

15:45 to tackle these challenges and change

15:47 your narrative about them in fact it's

15:49 showing how you can create shared value

15:51 by doing this the right way all that

15:53 increased efficiency has to be good for

15:54 the organization but equally is good for

15:56 the planet at the same time so i love

15:58 the fact that you've given us a sneak

16:00 peek of what's to come there which is

16:01 brilliant raj so thank you so much for

16:02 doing that i can't wait to just sharing

16:04 more about that when you go live on that

16:06 shortly and believe me anything i can do

16:08 to support that i would love to because

16:09 i these are just incredibly important

16:11 work so thank you what a way to end it

16:13 raj thank you so much for joining us

16:14 today on the show

16:16 thank you

16:17 my absolute pleasure and for everyone

16:19 listening as well thank you so much for

16:21 joining us and a lot of the examples

16:22 we've shared in this episode as well

16:24 we'll put them in the show notes we'll

16:26 create links and we'll keep in touch as

16:27 well about the announcement that raj has

16:29 made as well today about sustainability

16:31 when that goes live very shortly so

16:32 thank you all for watching us on

16:34 tomorrow's tech today thank you

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