Juniper Networks Inc. today announced that it has inked a $450 million deal to acquire 128 Technology Inc., a Burlington, Massachusetts-based maker of a software platform for powering enterprise networks.

The transaction is expected to wrap up in Juniper’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ends in late January.

Founded in 2014, 128 Technology provides a software-based virtual router platform for linking a company’s offices, data centers and public cloud deployments. It’s designed to replace the traditional physical routers that enterprises have historically used for the task. The promised benefits include lower operating costs and simpler day-to-day management operations.

According to 128 Technology, its platform can automatically optimize the paths through which data traverses the network in order to improve application performance. It also secures that data using what the company describes as a zero-trust approach. The virtual router encrypts traffic, performs authentication and only processes network requests that meet an organization’s security policies, rejecting all other requests by default.

These features are delivered without the use of network tunnels, virtual data pathways that many other software-defined products rely on to transit packets. Juniper says that removing the need to create network tunnels frees up hardware resources.  

“When session smart networking is deployed without tunnels, approximately 40% of WAN overhead is reduced automatically, which substantially lowers bandwidth utilization expenses and minimizes cloud hosting costs,” Manoj Leelanivas, Juniper’s executive vice president and chief product officer, detailed in a blog post today.  “In some instances, in fact, 128 Technology is 75% more cost effective than traditional SD-WAN solutions!”

Juniper plans to integrate 128 Technology’s network security and  optimization features with its Mist AI platform, which uses artificial intelligence to enhance the efficiency of enterprise networks. Juniper originally obtained Mist AI through an acquisition as well: the $405 million purchase of startup Mist Systems Inc. last year.

At the time, Mist focused mainly on providing solutions for Wi-Fi networks in locations such as corporate offices. Juniper has since extended the startup’s AI technology to the wide-area network as well. In July, it introduced a machine learning solution that continuously checks if a company’s wide-area network meets operational expectations and automatically flags anomalies.

Juniper will fold 128 Technology into the AI Driven Enterprise business unit that includes Mist when the transaction is completed.

Photo: Juniper Networks