There’s an old saying in IT that any standard is good enough as long as it is a standard, which loosely translates as ‘we don’t care what it is, only that everybody sticks to it’.
The concept of the software defined data centre (SDDC) has been with us for a few years now, but it is only recently that the network virtualisation platforms needed to make it happen have matured to point where real time deployments become possible.
It is obvious from the noises being made by its senior executives that Juniper wants to be known as a disruptor - a shining example of a forward looking company ready and willing to embrace the realities of an SDN/NFV market that values virtualised software more than networking hardware.
Network and telecommunications equipment vendors are not exactly renowned for playing nicely together, having historically exhibited a special type of narcissism which has caused no end of problems for the network and operations managers left to find ways of forcing different products to communicate efficiently.