What is our primary use case?
We are a direct partner of formerly 128T, which is now Juniper. For Juniper, we are currently working on the correct partner status, which is missing due to the purchase of 128T.
As a German ISP, we use SSRs to produce SD-WAN deployments for our customers for plenty of different use cases, such as inter-location connectivity, over bandwidth bundling, and application SLA requirements where some applications get threaded differently against each other. So, it depends on the customer, but we are currently using it for all of the use cases for which you can use SSR.
What is most valuable?
As compared to the other major vendors in the SD-WAN market, such as VeloCloud, Cisco, and others, the tunnel-free and secure vector routing technology is its major USP, which gives plenty of room to discuss with the customer why IPSec from 1998 is a bit outdated.
What needs improvement?
The UI of the SSR conductor is the main part where improvements can be done. Today, for every configuration step, you have to do a series of clicks. What we are missing there are wizards. For example, I have two applications, and I want one application to be prioritized against the other. In such a case, a wizard for assigning policies to a service without configuring each step by hand would be very helpful. There should be an overhaul of the GUI of the conductor. The functionality they have got in the Mist portal should be baked into the conductor itself. It would be really great, but as we all know, that won't happen.
Besides that, there are so many things we are discussing with the engineers and the product management of 128T or Juniper. I'm pretty sure that every feature that will come in the next half-year or three-quarters of a year would be influenced directly by us.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the Session Smart Router solution for about five years, which is way before it was bought by Juniper. So, we directly started with 128T.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is quite good for the General Available (GA) releases. We didn't have any problems. We also have some customers running the Limited Available (LA) versions because some features are still missing in the GA releases. The LA releases are obviously not as much tested as the GA releases. So, stability is sometimes an issue, but we are working on that currently.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We count our customers based on locations or sites. Our biggest customer has about 1,800 sites, and the next one has about 1,500 sites. Each site might have 200 to 500 users. Generally, performance-wise, a conductor can handle about 1,000 sites. Beyond that, it gets a bit hard.
How are customer service and support?
Because we are talking directly to engineers in the US, the support is usually the best you can possibly get. As a direct 128T partner, we don't count as a normal customer. So, for us, the support is perfect and fine, and we can talk to the engineers directly in Boston. Support is not a problem. I don't know about their normal technical support because we just don't really use it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We didn't use any other solution previously.
How was the initial setup?
For us, it's pretty much straightforward because we have been working with it for so long. We attended all the classes that 128T provided. So, for us, it's pretty much straightforward, but for a customer who doesn't have experience with any SD-WAN solution, especially not with the 128T solution, it would be fairly complex.
In terms of its maintenance, as an ISP, we have operators who handle more or less traditional routers that we have in our network. They also got trained on this SSR solution, and they can handle these too. Obviously, if you add more routers to your network, you more or less would need more staff to handle them, but there is no specific need just because you are using SSR.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are currently renegotiating the offer for the licenses and the license bundle model. The license for an ISP has to be different from the license for an end customer. This is something we are currently renegotiating with Juniper, but, of course, the pricing for the licensing is always an issue when you want to get more customers.
Juniper has just introduced a three-tier license model based on just routing, more or less features on top, and the full feature set. Therefore, the prices for the different tiers of licenses differ from each other. For the top license, I'd rate it a three to five out of five. It depends on the amount of discount you got. A customer with 2,000 sites would get more discounts than a customer with three sites. For the limited functionality tier, I'd rate them a bit lower because they limit the functionality we need. So, we don't buy these licenses. For the limited functionality, in my personal opinion, they are a bit expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When we started monitoring the SD-WAN market, we checked the obvious participants there, such as VeloCloud, and we decided to use 128T as our main and only SD-WAN.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to anyone who wants to use this solution is to read the menu. Every customer who directly wants to administer and operate an SSR solution should obviously get in touch with a Juniper partner to get it set up right from the start of the project. That's because, with the configuration itself, there are so many things you have to keep in mind when moving on from MPLS or VPN to an SD-WAN solution. It isn't directly related to the SSR component, but it is related to switching over to an SD-WAN solution.
I would rate Juniper Session Smart Router an eight out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
