Juniper Networks CEO claims cloud being pushed to 'breaking point'

Speaking at Juniper Networks' annual EMEA summit in London, CEO Rami Rahim warned of an approaching breaking point in cloud and addressed Nokia takeover rumours

Networks have become too complex, and firms are ill prepared for the oncoming challenges that IoT and 5G will bring to bear as a result, according to Juniper Networks' CEO Rami Rahim.

"Our driving strategy is what we call the pursuit of simplicity, because what I see as the main challenge of today is managing complexity," he said. "Networks have become too complex, fragile and difficult to manage. And I think this could actually be this industry's biggest challenge to date."

Juniper Networks often touts its growing software expertise, yet Rahim (pictured) chose to highlight the California-based vendor's innovation in routing as a solution to this spiralling complexity.

The CEO pointed to Juniper's PTX series core routers and packet transport routers as the foundation of the company's Converged Supercore architecture initiative, launched in 2011.

"We knew that there needed to be a more effective, and cost-effective, approach to deploying networks, and we invented this new concept of a lean core network with a product called the PTX which has been growing incredibly well for us. In fact, this year for the first time ever we have achieved number one market share in North America in core routing and that's primarily because of this product line," he said.

"We will look to build on this success elsewhere."

When explaining what he sees as the key challenges in the market, Rahim zeroed in on IoT and the advent of 5G as the two tech trends that will exacerbate the problems of excessive complexity and "fundamentally change network architectures".

"This concept that we know today of the cloud being a central datacentre that is delivering services to the masses will reach a breaking point due to IoT and 5G," Rahim said.

"If you think of the billions of devices that are going to be connected to this global network, the time between sensing the data from sensors - that are typically going to be video cameras - then collecting, acting, processing and then feeding back the intelligence into the network, that process is going to need to get tighter," he said.

Rahim also addressed rumours from last week that Nokia was plotting a takeover bid for Juniper, stating: "No, it's definitely not happening."