Driving network automation with TELUS

Juniper Networks is working with Canada-based TELUS to accelerate their network test certification. Instead of taking weeks, the automated process now takes days for the communications and information technology company which has 16 million customer connections.

“Our partnership with TELUS enabled them to offer better quality services and faster time to service introduction,” said Brendan Gibbs, Vice President, Automated WAN Solutions at Juniper Networks speaking from their US-headquarters in Silicon Valley.

“One of the problems the industry has is that test certification can take weeks, depending on the customer, and their use case. Juniper partners with TELUS on our professional services organisation, and some of our software tools, to accelerate and automate test certification,” said Gibbs.

“Juniper has been a partner of TELUS for many years and we've had a great role to play in the building their network and delivery of their services. We’re excited to partner in this new world of network automation which will help to simplify and speed up the process.”

• Juniper Networks, founded in 1996, is a leader of networking and security hardware, and software solutions in the Cloud + AI + 5G era. 
• In 2020 the company revenue was more than US$4bn. 
• Founded by Pradeep Sindhu, Dennis Ferguson, and Bjorn Liencres, to create innovative products and solutions, Juniper’s mission is to power connections and empower change.

“We have 9,500+ employees and Juniper has 120+ locations with presence in 50 countries. Juniper Networks services 49 of the top 50 service providers, we partner with top cloud hyperscale customers, and work with a large number of Fortune 500 customers. We have been part of the growth of the internet since day one and have always provided compelling networking solutions for all of those customer segments,” said Gibbs.

Commenting on where the industry needs to move next beyond automating service testing, Gibbs said: 

“I think the industry needs to automate the entire end-to-end service life cycle. The industry needs to focus on the service layer as everything will devolve from there—not just the underlying infrastructure, but also the transport services. 

“The next step for the industry is really moving to assured end-to-end service quality of experience. It should focus on the quality of experience from their end customers, not focusing on their own internal operations, but what is the end customer's experience. 

“I think automation can help onboard customers rapidly and assure the quality of experience. A recent study showed that 60-65% of problems were discovered by the end users, not the service provider and 95% of customers that have bad experiences just leave.

“Juniper introduced an automated software suite called Paragon Automation, which gives a client active testing at the service layer for an end-to-end framework. This addresses the question -- how do you know if the service is up and running?

“Customers can move up the stack to higher value functions. We're now in an experience-first era of networking and that's what Paragon aims to help with,” said Gibbs.