Customer Success Story
BT simplifies and improves service quality with agile network cloud
BT Group has embarked on a transformational journey to create a highly scalable and robust cloud core which can service the diverse needs of all its network applications across broadband, mobile and other mission critical services.
This Network Cloud has now scaled to accommodate many of BT’s key network centric applications and tens of millions of users without a huge scale up in staffing numbers and using a technology footprint which keeps space and power requirements as low as possible.
BT’s Network Cloud provides applications that underpin BT's U.K. consumer and business network services and emergency services. This demands a level of stability and robustness which is not typical of high availability DC deployments.
With support from Juniper, BT Network Cloud offers the high level of availability and performance demanded of a carrier’s core applications. Moving from dedicated compute platforms for each application to a shared infrastructure conserves and optimizes resources leading to better utilization and lower environmental impact.
BT Group’s mobile network, EE has been ambitious and aggressive in its use of cloud to ensure this critical business remains competitive and agile.
The network has currently migrated millions of mobile subscribers and is well on the way to successfully deploying all its mobile application infrastructure on a private cloud.
By leveraging Juniper’s professional services, BT Group has successfully completed the project on time and ensured that the challenging availability and performance targets of BT mobile network’s applications are met. BT Group relies on Juniper for software-defined networking (SDN), switching and firewall solutions for its network cloud.
Overview
| Company | BT Group |
| Industry | Service Provider |
| Products used | QFX10002, QFX5100, QFX5120, SRX Series, vSRX |
| Region | EMEA |
27 million
Mobile subscribers live on BT Network Cloud
NetOps
Drives automation, along with cloud-native networking
OpEx
Savings due to smaller data center footprint
Roll out 5G and scale to meet digital demand
The introduction of 5G created a unique opportunity for BT Group to transform its core network to ensure it was well positioned to offer new services to customers at unprecedented scale. BT Group chose to build a new network cloud to provide a common shared platform for core applications, which operate its broadband, fixed and mobile services.
The goals of the ambitious multiyear journey at BT were to deploy a state-of-the-art container-based mobile core that will boost BT’s business agility, operational efficiency and sustainability.
This infrastructure also forms part of the BT Group's U.K. consumer and business network services and will replace multiple legacy application deployments with a cloud-native platform that will meet growing capacity demands with greater agility, operational efficiency and security compliance.
Build an agile network cloud
Juniper collaborated with BT to deliver the high-performance, high-availability fabric for BT Network Cloud.
BT Group uses Juniper’s SDN platform, to automate the creation and management of its OpenStack-based telco cloud. It provides hybrid SDN orchestration and centralized control of virtual switching, routing and security. BT’s data centers contain more than 1,000 Juniper QFX Series Switches and 2,000 vRouters. Juniper vSRX Virtual Firewalls protect and secure the data center traffic.
BT’s cloud-native platform is deployed at multiple locations across the U.K. to form a distributed architecture that is designed to scale seamlessly with demand and to provide services closer to the end user than with traditional, more centralized deployments.
BT Group selected Juniper due to its engineering excellence and ability to provide a joined-up, end-to-end network solution which includes hardware, software and tools which can integrate reliably with the complete cloud stack. In this case BT is running containerized applications and optimizing costs from use of an OpenStack platform.
Juniper QFX provides the high performance, high availability fabric needed to support BT’s Network Cloud which has rapidly become the largest container-based cloud infrastructure in the world, and is still growing.
Boost service quality and operational efficiency
BT Group built a network that delivers value to its customers and its mobile division EE is currently recognized by independent U.K.-wide tests as providing the best mobile network in the U.K.
The deployment now represents the largest cloud-native mobile core in the world, operating all of BT’s 4G/5G services.
The use of BT Network Cloud streamlines operational deployment and management of the core applications, which keep the network running to its full potential and allows for innovation and agility in bringing new services to market.
BT Simplifies and Improves Service Quality with Juniper's Agile Network Cloud
Pradeep Puthussery, Head of Mobile Cloud, explains how BT leveraged Juniper to build the largest virtualized 4G/5G telco cloud in the world with high availability and performance, better utilization, and lower environmental impact.
The Products
Future-proof for the multicloud era with open SDN solutions that provide abstracted control, automated workflows, and security.
QFX10002
QFX10002 fixed-configuration switches are very dense, highly scalable platforms designed for today’s most demanding data center, campus, and routing environments. They’re loaded with power and functionality, all housed in a compact, 2 U form factor.
QFX5100
The QFX5100 line of top-of-rack 10/40GbE switches for the data center offers low latency, deployment versatility, and rich automation features. These switches provide universal building blocks for industry-standard architectures such as spine-and-leaf fabrics.
QFX5120
The QFX5120 line offers 1/10/25/40/100GbE switches designed for data center, data center edge, data center interconnect and campus deployments with requirements for low-latency Layer 2/Layer 3 features and advanced EVPN-VXLAN capabilities.
Protect your network edge, data center, and cloud-based applications with Juniper next-generation physical, virtual, and containerized firewalls, all managed via Juniper Security Director Cloud.
vSRX
The vSRX Virtual Firewall provides uncompromised flexibility, security effectiveness, and performance in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud environments.
Published July 2023