Jonathan Sprague
CTO Pradeep Sindhu is also Juniper’s founder.
Jonathan Sprague
Anytime you can replace moving atoms with propagating electromagnetic waves, you can be thousands of times more energy efficient, says Pradeep Sindhu, founder and CTO of Juniper Networks. Encouraging employees to telecommute or use videoconferencing instead of face-to-face meetings saves money and shrinks any business’s carbon footprint. But the next step, Sindhu says, is improving the energy efficiency of the network itself and that of the computation and storage infrastructure.
Data centers today account for 4 percent of global power consumption, Sindhu says, and that percentage is steadily growing. By creating energy-efficient products that have a long life, Juniper aims to reduce energy consumption and avoid resource depletion. For example, the company’s T1600 Core Router consumes 40 percent less energy and requires 40 percent less cooling than competitive products, Juniper says, and its JCS1200 Control System, which lets service providers expand their offerings and target specific markets without affecting their entire network, creates energy savings of up to 60 percent over other systems on the market today. “Our newest platform, the MX-3D, is 10 times more energy efficient than the best competitive product,” Sindhu adds.
While helping customers lower their energy usage, Juniper is also committed to reducing its own impact on the environment. With facilities and operations in more than 47 countries, Juniper says it meets or exceeds some of the industry’s strictest environmental standards, including through its commitments to trim its own carbon footprint and limiting ozone-depleting materials and other hazardous substances in its products. The company also works with governments, industry partners and others to develop industrywide standards for design regulations based on technological innovation, Sindhu says. He adds, “Juniper has always been at the forefront of green technology, even when it was not fashionable.”