Juniper Networks Outlines Application Acceleration Strategy; Delivering Applications Throughout the Distributed and Extended Enterprise.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:JNPR) today outlined its strategy to address the evolving application performance issues created by data center consolidation, server centralization and globally distributed users. Leveraging its core competencies in application acceleration and security, as well as its Enterprise Infranet framework, the company is delivering a comprehensive, pragmatic and systematic strategy for accelerating more applications, increasing reach and scalability, and leveraging visibility and reporting. In a related announcement, Juniper Networks today introduced the latest release of the WX Central Management System(TM) to address the visibility and reporting requirements.

The Juniper Networks Application Acceleration Strategy defines new capabilities designed to address the challenges associated with limited bandwidth, latency, application contention and system-wide management in the distributed and extended enterprise. This strategy builds on the established foundation of the Juniper Networks DX and WX/WXC product lines and will be implemented across a suite of application acceleration platforms.

"Many organizations are centralizing their data centers to enforce tighter security, simplify regulatory compliance and gain better control over corporate assets," said Eric Siegel, senior analyst at the Burton Group. "Enterprise network administrators need well-integrated application acceleration solutions to provide good response times and availability over the WAN for their widely distributed users without compromising security and without creating system management difficulties."

Accelerate More Applications

Today's enterprise typically supports a wide range of users -- employees, mobile workers, partners and customers -- spread around the world. These enterprises are using a combination of applications and Web services to streamline their businesses processes, improving the productivity of their distributed workforce, while creating true customer value and competitive differentiation.

"As we centralize our servers and consolidate our data centers, we need a solution that can accelerate the performance of our mission-critical business applications throughout our distributed enterprise," said Robert Bell, director of IT at GHAFARI, an architectural, engineering, consulting and staffing company based in Dearborn, MI. "The Juniper application acceleration platforms have enabled us to embark on these server centralization initiatives, which allow us to maintain employee productivity and reduce our maintenance, management and support costs even as we expand our business operations."

The Juniper Networks DX and WX/WXC application acceleration platforms improve end-user productivity, enhance the user experience, and minimize the performance impact of multiple roundtrips caused by chatty protocols like TCP, HTTP, CIFS and MAPI. The platforms increase productivity and efficiencies by strategically extending acceleration benefits to the broadest range of IP- and Web-based business applications, including SAP, SQL and Microsoft File Services and Exchange.

Also, the strategy addresses the acceleration of SSL-encrypted flows with Web-based applications by aiming to include additional platforms as part of the trust model. This would accelerate encrypted Web applications, rather than allowing them through untouched, as is the case with other WAN optimization solutions.

With users distributed across the enterprise, customers are demanding a more LAN-like experience for remote users. A key element for this experience is through application acceleration via the ability to deliver Web content caching functionality and adaptive content processing features at branch locations for the efficient and elegant content distribution to all remote and mobile users.

Increase Reach and Scalability

To address the performance challenges faced by extended enterprise users, the Juniper Application Acceleration Strategy defines a solution for enabling network administrators to accelerate applications for mobile users, partners and customers by securely deploying a WX agent. This downloadable agent will work in tandem with the WX platform in the data center to speed delivery of any business application that the WX platform can accelerate for branch users today.

The strategy also maps out intended performance improvements at the OC-3 data rates, as well as new resiliency features that would enable the highest availability for branch locations that are entirely dependent on the WAN connection to the data center.

Leverage Visibility and Reporting

To maintain optimum performance for all users, large enterprises and managed service providers need visibility into application performance over the WAN. To address these requirements, Juniper Networks today announced the latest release of the WX Central Management System(TM) (WX CMS(TM)) software for large enterprises and managed service providers (MSPs). This new release targets large deployments with a platform that delivers on the promise of visibility, acceleration and reporting, automates critical provisioning functions, and optimizes network resources.

About the DX Platform

The DX platform accelerates the delivery of Web-enabled applications to local, remote and mobile users by offloading back-end servers of repetitive and CPU-intensive tasks such as Web-object compression, caching/proxy, SSL encryption, and connection setup and teardown, allowing the servers to focus on serving content. As a result, the DX platform increases server capacity by up to four times and accelerates Web-enabled application performance by up to 50 percent, reducing overhead costs while dramatically improving response times. The DX platform also reduces data center complexity by consolidating a number of functions into a single device, eliminating the need for multiple point products and providing a highly scalable solution that delivers maximum availability.

About the WX and WXC Platforms

The Juniper Networks WX and WXC(TM) application acceleration platforms provide distributed enterprises with a cost-effective solution for accelerating business applications over the WAN. Based on the unique WX Framework, which integrates all the elements required to optimize application performance across wide-area links, the WX and WXC platforms help businesses maximize WAN investments and improve application response times for branch office users.

About Juniper Networks, Inc.

Juniper Networks is the leader in enabling secure and assured communications over a single IP network. The company's purpose-built, high performance IP platforms enable customers to support many different services and applications at scale. Service providers, enterprises, governments and research and education institutions worldwide rely on Juniper Networks to deliver products for building networks that are tailored to the specific needs of their users, services and applications. Juniper Networks' portfolio of proven networking and security solutions supports the complex scale, security and performance requirements of the world's most demanding networks. Additional information can be found at www.juniper.net.

Juniper Networks and the Juniper Networks logo are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.