While many enterprises are still seeing cloud platforms and utilities as primarily of use in addressing storage and data management, others are looking into the ways in which these technologies could be used to fundamentally alter the nature of networking.

At the Juniper NXTWORK 2016 event, Rami Rahim, CEO at Juniper Networks Inc., took some time to speak with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about the direction in which he sees networking moving as an industry and infrastructure.

Initial innovations

Giving an initial read on the situational changes since the last NXTWORK event, Rahim stated, “We’ve gone from just aggregation to cohesion. … Digital cohesion is about this next era of innovation that talks about the coming together of different, discrete services.”

Rahim continued: “This coming together of applications is just an example of how fast things are changing and how important it is for technology partners … to continue to innovate.”

IoT and networking

From there, the discussion moved to the possibilities being opened up by the Internet of Things and how much it’s doing to drive innovation. “There is so much excitement around IoT, and I think it is founded,” Rahim said. “At its core, it’s about connecting billions of devices in meaningful ways, but there’s so much more to it.”

However, he also pointed out some of the changes that need to be made for these new connectivities, with a special focus on the security side of things. “You have to rethink your security posture when it comes to IoT. … Every element in the network ultimately needs to participate in creating the most effective security posture overall. … Think of the future of networks as not just connectivity, but as a secure fabric,” he said.

Future networks

Looking forward, Rahim shared his estimation of how the networks will continue to evolve to make best use of the functionalities that are currently still undergoing development. “The value [of networking is] going to essentially explode into piece-parts,” he said, forecasting the distribution and sales of individual components, rather than complete systems, as what would be driving the market.

He also felt that while some of the changes have already come into fairly stable positioning, as with how “services is now sitting in the cloud, through virtual network services … there is no doubt [there is] big shift that’s happening” and that the combination of “software and services” is where he sees the future value of Juniper Networks to customers.

Automation and trust

“The most important reason why automation is necessary is that too many IT professionals today are bogged down with just keeping the lights on in legacy architecture,” Rahim stated. “Automation is this essential tool … that will help us in embracing these essential techniques.”

And with that focus on automation, he said Juniper is looking to not only take on the menial tasks that provide so much busy work for IT professionals, but to set its sights on more revolutionary conceptualizations. “In networking, we have a variety of automation techniques that we’ve employed … but networks are not self-driving yet, and that’s the bold statement that we’ve put forward [to guide us].”

However, getting there will not be an easy path, and Rahim sees effective security and awareness of that security as one of the most helpful tools Juniper Networks can use along the way. “Even in the domain of software, our primary focus is on the structure of the cloud and … running a cloud network. … If you ask anybody, the first thing that comes to mind in what is holding them back from going all in to either the public or private cloud is trust,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Juniper NXTWORK 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE