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Juniper Networks Advances Application Performance and Acceleration with New Compact Compute-Integrated Network Switch

Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), the industry leader in network innovation, today unveiled the QFX5100-AA, a new application acceleration switch, and the QFX-PFA, a new packet flow accelerator module, together providing a ground-breaking data center switch that consolidates compute resources and customizable logic into the network. Building on Juniper’s proven QFX product family, the QFX5100-AA and QFX-PFA in partnership with Maxeler Technologies’ customizable software logic will significantly accelerate business-critical applications in latency-sensitive computing environments. Ideal for financial services institutions, the switch and module will vastly improve the performance of applications that handle market data feeds, social media feeds, order execution routing and big data analytics, allowing financial firms to make decisions faster and take advantage of real-time market opportunities.

Today’s financial institutions need to analyze and process massive quantities of information instantly from various sources in order to make better trading decisions. Reducing the cost and complexity of their trading infrastructure so that it becomes faster and easier to manage is also a top priority. The compute-integrated networking approach will enable customers to distribute computing across their data center network infrastructure and achieve the ultra-high performance, low latency and predictability that is necessary in today’s financial services industry. This in turn will empower financial services firms to take advantage of emerging market opportunities, such as hyper-contextual trading, brought on by combining big-data analytics with increasingly powerful computing.

Juniper is committed to designing products that address its customers’ requirements for high-performance network infrastructure that can automate and scale as business demands. Financial institutions need to do real-time risk assessment, mine big data and process billions of new messages per second in order to be the first to act on a trade, which is why Juniper’s latest switch innovation will bring compute processing directly into the network.

News Highlights

Available in Q3 2015, the QFX5100-AA and QFX-PFA will enable financial services providers to streamline their network operations while empowering their customers to make split-second analysis based on significant amounts of data. Specific benefits will include:

  • A holistic data center network architecture that builds on the Juniper Networks® QFX5100 with a new 40G Ethernet switch that combines the Intel® Xeon™ processor E3-1125C v2 with Broadcom switching silicon, and the QFX-PFA module based on the Altera multi-100G field-programmable gate array (FPGA).
  • QFX5100-AA and QFX-PFA work with Maxeler Technologies’ dataflow programming environment for specific application programming that enables customers to develop and customize applications that best suit their requirements.
  • Performance acceleration at the application level provided by using customizable logic to offload processing of compute-intensive, real-time, deterministic, latency sensitive applications.
  • Data center automation, scale and compute power that accelerates packet flow processing and takes advantage of Juniper’s carrier grade operating system, Junos®.
  • Integration with Junos Space Network Director ensures automated and simple data center management from a single point of control.
  • Supports Java as the programming language to simplify logic programmability.
  • Better visibility and an application-centric view of the network through Juniper’s Cloud Analytics Engine that includes high frequency network monitoring and data analysis to improve overall performance.

Juniper is participating at the HPC for Wall Street – Cloud Technology Show and Conference today in which Andrew Bach, chief architect for financial services at Juniper Networks, and Ryan Eavy, executive director, architecture at CME Group, will be presenting at 12 p.m. ET on the topic of “The Disaggregation of Compute.” Juniper will also be demonstrating its latest financial services cloud networking solutions in Booth 206.

Supporting Quotes

CME Group is the world’s leading and most diverse derivatives marketplace, so it is crucial for us to have the ability to expand our network rapidly. Our platforms enable time sensitive, customizable and customer-focused compute applications that support our high expectations for operational integrity. Working with Juniper allows us to deliver a scalable, predictable and more cost efficient application switching platform with the convenience of a single switch.”
-Ari Studnitzer, managing director of architecture and product management, CME Group

Competitive edge for today’s businesses comes from their ability to ensure the delivery, speed and performance of mission-critical applications. By partnering with Juniper Networks for the release of their QFX5100-AA switch and QFX-PFA module, Maxeler is able to provide our joint financial institution customers with fully customizable applications, such as market data feeds or order execution routing, helping them launch into the new era of ultra-high speed financial transactions.”
- Oskar Mencer, chief executive officer, Maxeler Technologies

The possibilities of compute-integrated networking are transformative across a broad variety of financial services, including equities and commodities exchanges, market data providers, high-frequency trading, and credit processing. We see great potential in other sectors for this technology, including energy, research, education and large enterprises. With the introduction of Juniper Networks QFX5100-AA and QFX-PFA, we are delivering new computing capabilities within the data center network to ensure that our customers can make the most informed split-second investment decisions.”
-Andrew Bach, chief architect for Financial Services Team, Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks’ new switch, powered by the Intel Xeon processor E3-1125C v2, provides the performance and added intelligence needed to improve the ease of application integration. This solution, which embeds applications directly into the switch and utilizes the power of distributed computing, allows customers to take advantage of greatly improved performance.”
-Sandra Rivera, vice president & general manager, Network Platforms Group, Intel

You can find this press release at Juniper Networks News Room here.