With more enterprises shifting workloads to cloud environments, Juniper Networks Inc. is updating its software-defined networking controller with new capabilities to improve control of these tasks across a range of information technology environments.

Juniper envisions its Contrail Enterprise Multicloud platform as the foundation of its network automation efforts in a newly emerging multicloud world, in which enterprises run workloads across a host of cloud infrastructures. Enterprises are adopting this strategy because it brings key advantages such as better cost efficiencies and more flexibility as well as the ability to avoid getting locked into a single provider.

Despite those advantages, orchestrating multicloud deployments isn’t easy on the networking side. In most cases, enterprises must resort to using multiple controllers to manage overlay, underlay and network devices. It can be complicated and inconvenient, creating headaches for IT networking teams.

Juniper wants to make their lives much easier. To do so, it’s adding new end-to-end policy and control features to Contrail Enterprise Multicloud, so it can be used to manage workloads across a range of different clouds. Contrail Enterprise Multicloud comes with new “multidomain” orchestration capabilities that allow workloads in any cloud environment, be it public or private, to be managed and monitored from a single console.

Besides updating its SDN controller, Juniper is also doing its bit to help enterprises that are still working out how to make the jump to multiple cloud platforms. The company has created what it calls a five-step multicloud migration framework. It comprises a set of best practices, natural technology insertions and recommended products and services to ease the journey to a secure and automated multicloud.

The idea is to help customers create a “methods-driven approach to create their customized path to multicloud,” Juniper said.

Sumeet Singh, Juniper’s vice president of cloud analytics, discussed the company’s efforts to help customers adopt a multicloud strategy during an interview on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile TV studio, at the AWS re:Invent event in November. There, he explained how the company’s strategy involves helping customers to understand how their workloads are running on-premises and advising on which ones are better-suited for cloud environments. Once that’s done, Juniper’s software uses advanced algorithms to implement the appropriate policies bridge these between private data centers and the public cloud automatically.

“It’s truly all about simplicity,” Singh said. “The way we are doing that is … [to] automatically detect what’s going on and automatically apply the policies as well, no matter where the workload is and where it’s scaling.”

Here’s the full interview with Singh:

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