Weekly Wrap for Dec. 6, 2019

Plus, Juniper jams SD-LAN control into its SD-WAN management platform, and AWS partners with Verizon at the edge

One former Google exec replaces another at Juniper; enterprises gain a new SD-branch management option; and Verizon gets on AWS' wavelength.

Juniper CTO Bikash Koley Calls It Quits

Juniper SD-WAN Now Handles SD-LAN

AWS, Verizon Launch 5G Partnership at re:Invent

SDxCentral Weekly Wrap Full Transcript

Today is November 22, 2019, and this is the SDxCentral Weekly Wrap where we cover the week’s top stories on next-generation IT infrastructure.

This week’s episode of the Weekly Wrap is sponsored by Silver Peak. Learn more about the Silver Peak SD-WAN solution.

Juniper Networks named a new CTO that will see the vendor exchange one former Google executive for another.

The company noted in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late last month that Bikash Koley would leave his CTO role effective January 3.

Juniper followed up that discrete announcement with an official press release this week touting the hiring of Raj Yavatkar to that position.

Yavatkar is currently an IEEE Fellow and previously headed the development of network virtualization infrastructure and products for cloud networking at Google.

Prior to Google, Yavatkar held leadership roles at VMware and Intel.

Koley joined Juniper from Google in 2017.

The hire was quite a coup for the networking vendor, which at the time had seen declining router and security business revenue and struggled to sell its technology strategy.

During his tenure with the cloud giant, Koley designed Google’s production network infrastructure, spanning data center, backbones, optical, and the content edge.

His team also oversaw Google’s SDN evolution.

After jumping ship for Juniper, he said his strategy was to make the network simple using automation and orchestration across a multi-cloud environment.

Like his predecessor, Yavatkar will be tasked with advancing Juniper’s strategy of enabling highly automated, artificial intelligence-driven networks.

Juniper this week also announced that its SD-WAN management console now includes support for its SD-LAN service that provides enterprises with a simplified approach to managing their SD-branch deployments.

The SD-WAN enhancement allows users to now provision Juniper’s EX Series switches to manage LAN fabrics and configure LAN virtualization and security policies similar to how they control their SD-WAN environment.

This should reduce the cost and complexity of managing those environments.

The newly enhanced portal can also be used to show Mist wireless access points and launch the Mist cloud product to provisio...