Juniper Networks to buy BTI Systems

Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) has agreed to acquire privately held packet-optical transport systems specialist BTI Systems. The company is not announcing terms of the deal "as the terms are not considered to be material to our financials," in the words of a blog posted by Juniper executive vice president, general manager, Juniper Development and Innovation, Jonathan Davidson.

Juniper expects to close the deal in the second quarter of this year; Davidson wrote that the company will offer additional details at that time.

Davidson did reveal that Juniper views the acquisition as a way to "accelerate the delivery of open and automated packet-optical transport solutions that integrate with our NorthStar Controller and include network management features that enable end-to-end provisioning of new services." He said the acquisition will boost Juniper's efforts in the data center interconnect and metro markets.

BTI Systems began life as a metro optical transport systems vendor and gradually evolved to support of packet-optical transport. With its Intelligent Cloud Connect platform, the company moved into software-defined networking (SDN) based cloud services support (see "Intelligent Cloud Connect from BTI Systems targets SDN-enabled cloud services"). The Intelligent Cloud Connect offering supports label switched routing (LSR); given that Juniper Networks unveiled an LSR family in 2011, the PTX Series, the BTI product line would appear to be a good fit (see "PTX Series Packet Transport Switch starts Juniper Networks down packet-optical transport path" and "Juniper Networks touts converged supercore via PTX3000 and 100G OTN DWDM card").

Juniper eventually integrated optical interfaces into the PTX, but nevertheless continued to work with optical transport systems partners such as ADVA Optical Networking and Nokia Siemens Networks (now Coriant) on integration work, including IP/optical layer convergence (see, for example, "ADVA Optical Networking, Juniper Networks demo optical circuit provisioning on Irish network" and "Coriant, Juniper demo long-haul router, DWDM system interoperability"). Juniper and ADVA also had a cooperative marketing agreement (see "Neotel taps ADVA Optical Networking, Juniper Networks for packet-optical network").

For more information on high-speed transmission systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer's Guide.