Juniper Networks sees BTI acquisition as pathway to open line systems

Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) says it has completed the acquisition of optical transport systems company BTI Systems. A blog on Juniper's website begins to spell out what the switch and router vendor plans to do with its new assets. The development of open line systems to meet the needs of large-scale data center network operators appears to be in the cards.

Juniper announced its plans to acquire BTI this past January for a sum "not considered to be material to our financials," in the words of a blog post at the time from Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper Development and Innovation (JDI; see "Juniper Networks to buy BTI Systems"). In the most recent blog, Davidson writes that the acquisition will enable Juniper to offer a comprehensive offering under a unified management structure for data center interconnect and metro packet optical transport applications.

The offering represents a single-layer packet-optical networking approach, according to Davidson. It will support broader network automation, rapid service creation, and an open framework for maximum flexibility, he adds. Among other platforms, BTI had been marketing the Intelligent Cloud Connect platform, a software-defined networking (SDN) friendly data center interconnect offering that supported label switching (see "Intelligent Cloud Connect from BTI Systems targets SDN-enabled cloud services"). Juniper's Packet Transport Switch family is based on label switching.

Looking forward, Davidson says the addition of BTI's expertise will enable further integration of optical capabilities into Juniper's switches and routers. The company also expects to use BTI's capabilities to play in the open line systems space.

"Additionally, we plan to build evolved open optical line systems to continue to drive cost-efficient networks as well as evolve operation and control with open, standard and programmatic interfaces across all the layers of network," Davidson writes. "More to come on this at a later time."

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