Simplified architecture for financial services

Financial institutions around the world are looking to flatter, simplified data centre architecture to support agility.

So says Brett Ley, Juniper Networks' sales director for EMEA, who adds that there is growing interest globally in data centre transformation to reduce complexity in the data centre network fabric. Data centres in the financial services sector have been too complex for too long, says Ley. "They need transformation in order to gain agility and support migration to the virtualised environment," he says. "We are now approaching the tipping point for fabric-based architectures."

Juniper Networks says a true data centre network fabric interconnects thousands of server, storage and other network ports in a flat, ultra-low-latency infrastructure that provides any-to-any connectivity, ensuring every device is a single hop away from every other device. Since the fabric functions as a single, logical device, it preserves the operational construct, performance and simplicity of a single switch while delivering the scalability and resiliency of a data centre network. A flat, fabric-based network architecture also eliminates the need for multiple layers of devices, switch-to-switch interactions and shared network protocols.

Ley says global financial institutions of all sizes are embarking on major data centre transformations, but this transformation must be undertaken in a way that mitigates risk - particularly in the financial services sector.

Ley will address the upcoming Juniper Networks Financial Data Centre Architecture Executive Forum, where he will elaborate on experiences in data centre transformation in top financial services enterprises around the world. For more information about this event, click here.