In January, Juniper Networks announced the acquisition of Ottawa-based optical equipment vendor BTI Systems.  This week, Juniper announced the completion of the acquisition.

Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager, Juniper Development and Innovation, outlined his vision for the acquisition in one of his blog entries.  If we can believe the strategic direction that Davidson outlines, they are planning to much more aggressively pursue the opportunity of integrating Juniper’s product portfolio in data routing/switching into the optical world.  They also want to leverage BTI’s expertise in Software Defined Networking (SDN) into the Juniper product portfolio.

At this time their plan is more a vision than a detailed roadmap.  Davidson says, “In terms of a roadmap, BTI Systems’ portfolio complements Juniper’s IP and Ethernet product portfolio with a richer set of optical capabilities, optical network management and automation software. Juniper plans to leverage these capabilities, as well as the complementary talent and expertise that the BTI Systems’ team brings, to further integrate optical capabilities in our switching and routing portfolio. Additionally, we plan to build evolved open optical line systems to continue to drive cost-efficient networks as well as evolve operation and control with open, standard and programmatic interfaces across all the layers of network”.

Juniper had previously announced that “the terms of the agreement at this time….are not considered to be material to our financials.”  If Juniper can leverage this small financial investment to create an optical product line for them, it will have been one of the best investments ever in hi-tech.  But as always seems to be the case, it is easier to articulate the vision than execute on a successful implementation.  Let’s see how they perform.

Updated August 4, 2021