As the market continues to expand, the challenge for service providers is to avoid becoming a low-value data transport conduit. Rather, you must transform your business model to ensure that your organization plays a key role in the mobile value chain as a “smart-pipe” distributor of content and applications. There is a clear opportunity for operators who are able to monetize the network, develop relationships with new mobile ecosystem players such as application and content developers and create a new application-oriented business model that works for all parties.

In order to fully participate in this new business model, operators will require a next-generation mobile network that can facilitate monetization through enhanced policy management, identity management and application awareness within the evolved packet core. Hence, the need for true service velocity, whereby revenue-producing services are developed and brought to market quickly to ensure that operators achieve an optimum ROI on their investments in next-generation/4G mobile broadband networks.

As we move from circuit-switched networks to IP networks, the inherent challenges—cost control, traffic management, data integrity, security and quality of service—must be addressable by the operator, through the network infrastructure. Mobile network operators can achieve significant benefits and reach their next-generation/4G network goals more effectively by choosing a network infrastructure provider who clearly recognizes and is responding to the changes in the mobile ecosystem, who understands unique the requirements of IP-based networks and who can be a trusted partner for mobile operators who are in transition.

This is where Juniper comes in.

Juniper Networks is the market leader in building high-performance packet networks, with industry-leading IP/MPLS expertise that has led to a great deal of success with both wire-line and wireless carriers. Juniper Networks advanced mobile solutions enable mobile network operators to build flexible, cost-effective and scalable networks, and give them the ability to leverage a common IP infrastructure, based on the most popular mobile network technologies (including UMTS, CDMA and WiMAX), in order to increase profitability. This flexibility enables the service velocity, network monetization and operational efficiencies mobile operators need to implement value-added services.

Juniper solutions leverage service and policy intelligence to control flows across the core network, making the core network an active participant in the delivery of the user experience. This allows end-to-end control of flows and allows guarantees for services such as video-on-demand and voice, which are sensitive to jitter and latency. In addition, it supports service awareness in the core, which enables service providers to avoid making the costly mistake of leaving their subscribers’ experience with new applications to chance. Service awareness also helps service providers avoid the higher Opex costs involved in reengineering the network when new services demand guaranteed delivery. It constitutes the most flexible and cost-efficient solution on the market today for next-generation network service providers.

Juniper Networks has developed a solution for mobile operators that supports legacy networks today as well as the 4G networks of tomorrow. Juniper’s architecture has the flexibility to support multiple types of traffic across the same network, all managed seamlessly by a unified network management system, which can provide advanced identity, policy and security controls.

In the dynamic new mobile ecosystem, time-to-market and the ability to respond quickly with partners, services and applications will be even more critical than ever. Juniper has developed two programs to help speed the process. The Open IP Service Creation Program (OSCP) and the Open IP Solution Development Program (OSDP) help service providers achieve their service velocity goals.

The OSCP provides a northbound interface, which sits on top of a policy and identity layer, to an open plane that enables service providers to work with any service or application they desire to build a new service in a matter of days.

The OSDP enables customers and partners to develop new, specialized Junos® software applications using a powerful set of development resources, including a software development kit (SDK) that offers intelligent and secure interfaces to routing and service functions. Both the OSCP and OSDP programs are open, which means that service providers and application developers who work with Juniper are free to innovate and build open applications in a secure environment for new third-party applications to run or to integrate into Junos software.

Juniper’s network infrastructure helps service providers foster service model innovation and lowers network operating costs, driving network monetization. Juniper Networks solutions are designed to help service providers evolve their business models, accelerating (and securing) the deployment of services and applications that are necessary to recover the cost of network expansion and the inevitable migration to next-generation mobile networks.