Customer Success Story

AI-driven network helps London Borough of Brent better serve citizens

Brent, a vibrant multicultural community in northwest London, is most famous for being the home of Wembley Stadium. It’s also home to 337,000 people and 149 different languages. London Borough of Brent Council, the local government authority, refreshed its Civic Centre offices with a Juniper AI-driven enterprise network to support its work making the community better, safer, and stronger.

Company	London Borough of Brent Council
Industry	Government and Non-Profit
Products used	Wireless Access Points, EX Series, SRX Series, Wi-Fi Assurance, Wired Assurance, AP33, AP63, EX3400, EX4600, SRX320
Region	EMEA

Customer Success At-a-glance

Support better digital experiences for council staff and visitors

Increased staff productivity, producing an equivalent of £400k savings per annum in staff time by 2023/24.

People living in London Borough of Brent

Brent named “Council of the Year” in 2020 by the Local Government Chronicle Awards

Challenge

Fostering culture, empathy, and shared prosperity

Brent’s civic, public, and administrative offices are in the iconic Civic Centre near Wembley Stadium. Some 2000 staff oversee local government functions like education, council housing, social services, libraries, parks, waste collection and disposal, traffic, roads, and environmental health.

The Civic Centre also serves as a community hub, with an amphitheater, cafés, wedding facilities, meeting spaces, and a garden. The building has earned sustainability and design accolades, including for cooling, heating, and power systems that run on waste fish oil.

But technology has advanced considerably since the Civic Centre opened 2013, and the wireless network lacked the capacity and coverage to support staff and visitors’ mobile devices. It was time for a network that was faster, more secure, and easier to manage. The center wanted to future proof its network and ready to scale and update the network in an agile way.

Solution

A full-stack Juniper network simplifies IT operations

“Juniper met our requirements for a next-generation network,” says Tim Butler, network manager for Brent London Borough Council.

An AI-driven Juniper network supports a flexible workplace and community events at the Civic Centre. Juniper access points and switches deliver simple, unified connectivity at scale. Juniper firewalls protect against advanced attacks.

Juniper cloud services, driven by Mist AI, automate tasks and proactively address network issues. For example, Wi-Fi Assurance, Wired Assurance, and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant services help Brent deliver a better user experience while streamlining network operations.

The value of AI-driven operations became evident long before the deployment. During the proof-of-concept test, Marvis pinpointed several long-standing network problems, which IT could then resolve.

“Marvis and Mist AI identified the source of performance issues with our core firewall and DHCP server as well as faulty cabling for a new AP,” says Butler. “I thought Mist AI would tell us about Wi-Fi issues only, but it went above and beyond.”

Outcome

Working toward the greater good

Fast, reliable Wi-Fi allows council staff at Civic Centre to work freely from their desks or in collaborative spaces as they strive to make life better for residents. There’s plenty of Wi-Fi capacity for guests, whether visiting a café or attending an event, to use their mobile devices.

An AI-driven network enables smoother network operations for the IT team as well. Since deploying Juniper, IT has seen a reduction in network-related trouble tickets. When issues do arise, AI tools give IT clear visibility into the user experience and recommend fixes. With that insight, fewer issues escalate to network engineering.

Juniper networking is now Brent’s standard for future refreshes. Looking ahead, the Council can turn on Juniper cloud services as needed, such as real-time indoor location services that allow the borough to optimize the use of office space.

“A Juniper network, with Marvis and Mist AI, allows us to deliver better network user experiences to staff and guests while simplifying network support, which will save us money.”

Tim Butler Network Manager, Brent London Borough Council

The Products

PRODUCT FAMILY

Wireless Access Points

Juniper is leading the convergence of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth® LE, and IoT with our access points (APs). Juniper APs work seamlessly with the Juniper Mist Cloud architecture and Mist AI, enabling near real-time metadata collection and analysis from all wireless clients.

PRODUCT FAMILY

EX Series Switches

Juniper cloud-ready EX Series switches are designed for the converged enterprise branch, campus, and data center. They address growing enterprise demands for high availability, unified communications, and virtualization.

PRODUCT FAMILY

SRX Series Firewalls

Protect your network edge, data center, and cloud applications with Juniper’s next-generation physical, virtual, and containerized firewalls. They’re all managed via Juniper Security Director Cloud for a unified management experience and consistent security policy enforcement.

Product

Wi-Fi Assurance

Driven by Mist AI and machine learning, the Juniper Mist Wi-Fi Assurance cloud service automates troubleshooting and operations. It ensures wireless networks are predictable, reliable, and measurable while providing near-real-time visibility into service levels.

Product

Wired Assurance

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance brings Mist AI to access-layer switching. It sets a new network management standard with AI-Native operations and automation, improving the experiences of devices connected through Juniper EX Series Switches.

Screenshot of MARVIS troubleshooting details

Product

Marvis VNA

The Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) cloud service is the first and only cloud service that offers a natural language conversational interface for enterprise networks, enabling simple and seamless interactions to optimize user and operator experiences.