Juniper Networks and Nokia Siemens Networks have formed a joint venture to address the Carrier Ethernet Transport market, according to the companies.

 

This latest announcement extends the previously announced partnership enhancement designed to deliver service providers a fully interoperable Carrier Ethernet solution for mobile backhaul, business services and residential broadband networks

 

The headquarters of this joint venture will be in Netherlands. According to the companies, the joint venture will be dedicated to managing and executing the Carrier Ethernet portfolio roadmap.

 

With the planned solution, customers can monetize their networks through a faster time-to-market for new revenue-generating services. In addition, companies’ officials said that they can improve network efficiency, which will drive down transport costs.

 

This planned structure is expected to allow both companies to contribute the necessary products and support. Officials said that this will enable meeting the end-to-end portfolio needs of some 200 joint service provider customers worldwide.

 

The solution consists of Juniper Networks MX Series Ethernet Services Routers, Nokia Siemens (News - Alert) Networks A-series Carrier Ethernet Switches, and also Nokia Siemens’ end-to-end “point-and-click” network management system.

 

“The combination of the Carrier Ethernet portfolios of Juniper and Nokia Siemens Networks creates a very compelling solution set,” said Randy Nicklas, chief technology officer at XO Communications (News - Alert).

 

He said that Juniper and Nokia Siemens Networks understand their Carrier Ethernet needs and share company’s Ethernet-centric vision of delivering telecommunications services.

 

Juniper Networks (News - Alert) MX Series is a family of Ethernet Services Routers with switching features that deliver flexibility and reliability to support advanced services and applications, said officials.

 

The MX Series Ethernet Services Routers consist of the MX960, MX480 and MX240, and provide high port-density routing and switching in a range of high-performance hardware platforms.

 

The Nokia (News - Alert) Siemens Networks A-series is a Carrier Ethernet switching portfolio providing an effective evolution path from the existing TDM networks towards the next-generation Carrier Ethernet Transport networks.

 

The A-series provides the SDH carrier-class characteristics over a modern, cost effective Carrier Ethernet network. Additionally, it enables cost efficiencies by carrying both voice and data traffic with higher traffic volumes at lower costs.

 

Officials said that the A-series can serve as an access solution located at the customer premise or as a "last mile" aggregation unit that gathers traffic from various customer sites.

 

Nokia Siemens Networks’ (News - Alert) network management system features simplify network management, and eliminate the need to configure individual nodes and perform laborious traffic engineering.

 

Manoj Leelanivas, senior vice president and general manager at Juniper Networks, said that the combination of Nokia Siemens Networks' leadership in metro access and network management and Juniper's strength in Carrier Ethernet metro aggregation applications will enable customers to effectively monetize the network with new revenue-generating services and lower transport costs.

 

“Through the combination of the metro aggregation and metro access and network management strengths of each company, this planned partnership enables both Juniper and Nokia Siemens Networks to bring our joint vision of an extremely efficient, easy to manage unified Carrier Ethernet solution supporting all services on a single network to life,” said Bernd Schumacher, head of Broadband Connectivity Solutions business unit at Nokia Siemens Networks.

 

The plans call for the new Carrier Ethernet solution to be sold by both companies. The scheduled introduction date is the fourth calendar quarter of 2009.