Exclusive Interview: Pankaj Kitchlu, Systems Engineering Director, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is one of the largest networking solutions provider across the world, with over 9,000 employees in 70 countries. Founded in 1996, the company excels in networking hardware and software solutions for enterprises.

At Juniper India & SAARC, Mr. Pankaj Kitchlu is the Systems Engineering Director. He handles Juniper's telecom service business in the region. He had rich experience in the industry, having previously held positions at Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications.

In a conversation with Voice&Data, Kitchlu reflects on the recent developments in telecom and networking, and how that will shape the future of connectivity.

We have seen great digital adoption across the board from every kind of industry over the past 2-3 years. What do you think has driven the change?

Digital adoption will only continue to grow as industry players introduce more natural ways for people to interact with technology through sensory inputs such as touch, speech and gestures. This first started with the widespread adoption of touch-based smart devices. Then, it led to an increase in demand for ubiquitous wireless connectivity and need to access applications in the edge and cloud.

This transformative shift has resulted in the staggering need for businesses to stay constantly connected and digitize processes and operations. The pandemic has contributed more conversations around digital transformation strategies in boardrooms. However, it has also brought to light the importance of quality user experiences.

Looking ahead, the industry will need to shift its focus towards delivering superior user experiences. User experience should be seen as the single most important metric for measuring a successful IT infrastructure.

The ongoing digital revolution has certainly seen digital adoption at an unprecedented level. Do you see the momentum continuing in the near future?

The digital revolution is here to stay and platforms, which are innovative and create unique experiences will come out on top. Some of the key factors that will fuel mass digital adoption include the edge cloud, AI and 5G.

These technologies will help fuel digital adoption amongst companies that will heavily rely on real-time analytics and always-on connectivity. In terms of industries that will embrace this change are organizations in healthcare, manufacturing, transportation and other critical industries who will all be at center of this digital revolution.

We will also see more companies introducing application that offer advanced features to provide superior user experiences. For example, now we are seeing the rise of telehealth services giving patients the convenience to seek medical care from the comfort of their own home. Technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have the potential to transform several industries including retail, e-commerce and civil engineering.

How well has Indian industry coped with the pandemic? Was there anything you would have done differently?

India, in particular its IT services industry, has remained resilient and continues to grow both domestically and globally. This resilience has has helped to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. For example, early adopters of digital platforms in India have managed to remain stable and are now experiencing growth.

The pandemic also shone a spotlight on the importance of disaster recovery sites to safeguard business continuity, especially with the industry-wide supply chain constraints. In addition, organization now understand the need to build resilient network architectures that can mitigate against disruption, while provisioning for sudden spikes in network traffic and bandwidth demands.

Furthermore, India is transforming into a wireless first nation with demand for connectivity reaching an all-time high. As such, more investments need to be made into the country’s fiber networks to keep up with the demand. With 5G on the horizon, there will be potential to introduce both B2C and B2B use cases; fiber networks will play a significant role in the success of the rollout.

Cloud and Edge Computing is fast becoming the priority of network operators. How important do you think edge computing is to telecom service providers and other network operators?

Edge computing is increasingly viewed by service providers from a quality of experience lens. With latency going down from hundreds of milliseconds to less than ten milliseconds, round-trip delays will be significantly reduced or even eliminated. This will bring the possibilities of the edge cloud even closer for enterprises to execute in the market.

For example, applications that need instant feedback to facilitate quick decision-making will rise in prominence. Uses cases include automobile manufacturers introducing autonomous cars, as well as healthcare institutions exploring the use of robotic-assisted surgery tools. Essentially, edge computing offers enterprises the opportunity to introduce cutting-edge services and solutions to stay ahead of the curve.

Another key technology change making this possible is the separation of mobile User Plane Function (UPF), which can now be located now on the edge cloud within the enterprise or on private on-premises edge. Native support for edge computing and flexible UPF placement, introducing Service & Session Continuity (SSC) that allows Make-Before-Break connectivity.

Edge cloud on the telco Premise would make sense for enhanced broadband use cases like entertainment, gaming, retail and logistics. Another slice of the edge cloud might move into the enterprise space where low latency and real time nature are key priorities for the manufacturing, healthcare and finance sectors. A hybrid edge makes sense when you must balance both mass and low latency in the energy and automotive industry.

In today’s landscape of omnipresent threats, security needs to remain top of mind. Enterprises should focus on moving from detection to enforcement without any manual intervention.  Real-time cyber attacks are very much a reality today. Therefore, it is crucial that all touchpoints are secure to ensure uninterrupted and seamless operations.

5G is fast becoming the network of choice for many Industry 4.0 applications. What are some of the crucial enterprise-level use cases for 5G?

The adoption of 5G can be seen as the first generation for enterprises, and the fifth generation for consumers. This is because in the past three decades, majority of developments in next-generation networks were focused on consumer use cases. However, this will shift due to the focus on Industry 4.0.

More and more enterprises are becoming open to the adoption of 5G technology. This will result in a wave of innovative and advanced Industry 4.0 use cases pioneered by enterprises. Furthermore, two other factors that will fuel this mass adoption is the shift towards edge cloud computing and AI. Both of these will work in hand in hand with 5G to make the enterprise transformation journey simpler.

We are witnessing early adopters changing their architecture needs based on business model offerings. Furthermore, the readiness of enterprises to adopt 5G to refine their offerings, as well as country level initiatives by the government and regulators are factors that will drive 5G investments.

What will remain consistent is the basic need to deliver connectivity for organizations in the following sectors:

• Logistics, sports, entertainment, tourism, retail and other sectors that are driven by consumer demand.
• Manufacturing, robotics, automotive, mining, ports and other sectors that depend on low latency to streamline productivity and efficiency.
• HealthCare, FinTech and other industries that are time sensitive and require precision.
• Smart cities, utilities, public safety, transport and other mission critical industries.

So far, India has focused on improving existing networks than working on rolling out 5G. Do you believe that is the right call?

India is still focused on getting the 4G experience right, and in the last two years, service providers have been focused on setting quality of experience standards instead of mass network rollouts. That said, data consumption in India has reached an all-time high and continues to grow, which also means that a 5G rollout will be crucial in meeting demands.

The solution to this challenge can be found in planning ahead and having a long-term vision of how 5G work will work and what are its benefits. To achieve this, a significant amount of investment needs to go towards the metro, aggregation & access to upgrade from 10/100G to 400G port connectivity.

What this also means is that a lot of time and resources need to go towards developing this transport layer to be ready for 5G on day one. In this way, service providers can start looking at developing architecture for the network of the next decade to meet the demands of future growth and experience a more seamless transformational journey down the road.

IoT, especially NB-IoT, has been gaining traction for the past few years. With 5G on the horizon, do you see IoT-powered enterprises in the near future?

IoT has always been present, but what will change in the next generation is an ecosystem of smart devices and sensors equipped with edge computing. IoT-powered enterprises regardless of vertical can now grow and developing a services mix, which they can offer more broadly. Furthermore, the cost and strong business use cases of IoT will drive growth of IoT in India.

In addition, with the massive influx of data from sensors and devices, enforcing security policies across every point of connection could be a starting point for enterprises to think about creating smaller cyber attack surfaces. Juniper Connected Security for example unifies all network elements into a threat-aware network.

What does the next generation of connectivity hold for Juniper Networks?

At Juniper, we remain committed to executing on our Experience-First Networking strategy and leading the industry in delivering the best possible experience for both network operators.

We have a clear strategy for next decade of networking and are now focused on these three aspects:

• AI Driven Enterprise. We continue to build on our wired and wireless access leadership. This year we introduced Juniper Session Smart SD-WAN Driven by Mist AI, which will enrich user experiences across the WAN with insight, automation, and action.
• Cloud-Ready Data Center. With a truly best-in-class automation solution in Apstra, we will bring self-driving networking to the data center across all customer segments – enterprise, service provider and cloud provider.
• Automated WAN. We will focus the 400G inflection, metro and access networking, and automation for a superior service experience. In particular, our Paragon Automation suite providing end users with an assured service experience throughout the life of their service.