The growing demand for cloud computing services by enterprises across the world has thrown up growth opportunities for many service providers.

One such provider is Juniper Networks, which assists in building large, cost-effective data centre networks over which such services are delivered.

Why cloud? Cloud systems have two clear advantages for enterprises over having a physical setup and storing data in their own local network. First, cloud systems can be scaled up conveniently; second, they are much more cost-effective.

But many firms are still hesitant in moving over completely to a cloud-based system over privacy and security concerns.

For instance, following the Edward Snowden leaks, people are concerned about who can access data on a public cloud and are thinking carefully about what they want to put out on a public cloud, says Russell Skingsley, Vice-President, Systems Engineering and Centre of Excellence, APAC, Juniper Networks. So, people are being prompted into thinking about private clouds to address privacy concerns.

Juniper Network’s collaboration with VMware in the Asia Pacific market, which integrates its MetaFabric architecture with VMware’s NSX network virtualisation platform for virtualised data centre networking, is a partnership that will tap into this segment of the cloud computing market.

Another issue surrounding cloud computing and storage is security. Service providers are addressing this by thinking in terms of virtualised security systems.

Security solution For example, Juniper Network’s Firefly Perimeter solution is a virtualised security product, based on a four-tiered architecture. The layering and synchronisation mechanism helps to provide end-to-end data security. This offers more comprehensive protection compared with the traditional data centre security architecture, which relies solely on physical appliance-based enforcement. Also, cloud solution providers need to handle data on a very large scale.

Skingsley says that recently, many companies have begun scaling up to meet the requirement of large data centres. Juniper Networks has a history of building large-sized networks for service providers.

The writer was in Singapore at the invitation of the company

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