Case Study
Symantec Gains Greater Agility
with Open-Source Private Cloud
and OpenContrail
Summary
Company:
Symantec
Industry:
Technology
Business Challenge:
Build a multitenant cloud platform
to support software development
teams
Technology Solution:
• OpenContrail
As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated, the challenges multiply fast
for companies like Symantec that help customers secure and manage information.
Protecting customer assets requires real-time analysis of Internet-borne threats, massive
data storage, and management of hundreds of millions of customer endpoints around
the world. Symantec must move quickly to develop new security solutions to keep
customers protected.
Business Challenge
“We need to be able to process huge amounts of data coming from the Internet to
understand where the needles are in the haystack,” says Steve Hallett, vice president
of cloud engineering for Symantec. “The increase in data and the need for more insight
faster is creating a need for urgency.”
Business Results:
• Developing higher quality
software faster
Symantec is building a private cloud to protect its customers in today’s world of mega
• Eliminated vendor lock-in with
open-source cloud elements
faster and more collaboratively.
• Projecting a seven-figure ROI
breaches and to enable its software development teams to build and test applications
“Juniper was able to bring significant, deep OpenStack expertise to the
project. It’s a big advantage that, whether you’re using OpenContrail or
Contrail, it’s the same bits. Juniper is bringing best practices to my team
about how we’re going to secure the cloud.”
Steve Hallett, Vice President of Cloud Engineering
Technology Solution
Avoiding proprietary systems and vendor lock-in was a top priority when designing the
cloud platform. “We wanted to have a path to self-sufficiency,” says Hallett. “We wanted
to create an ecosystem where we could leverage best practices and build relationships
with the teams who are developing the platforms and products.”
Symantec’s cloud platform fully leverages open source. The foundation is Neutronbased OpenStack, with Storm for distributed real-time computing, Kafka for distributed
messaging, Hadoop for distributed computing, and OpenContrail, an open-source
network virtualization and SDN solution initiated by Juniper Networks.
“Open source gives us full transparency into the software development process, how
blueprints are created, how software is developed, and the software quality control
1
Symantec Gains Greater Agility with Open-Source Private Cloud and OpenContrail
Case Study
processes,” says Hallett. “It also gives us the chance to influence
“Juniper was able to bring significant, deep OpenStack expertise
the roadmap, which is very hard to achieve when you’re dealing
to the project,” says Hallett. “It’s a big advantage that, whether
with proprietary stacks.”
you’re using OpenContrail or Contrail, it’s the same bits. Juniper
The Symantec cloud platform uses OpenContrail for network
virtualization, including the SDN controller, virtual router, analytics
engine, and published northbound APIs. Juniper Networks has
is bringing best practices to my team about how we’re going to
secure the cloud. That’s the trifecta of how Juniper is engaging
with our team.”
made the source code library for Juniper Networks Contrail
Symantec’s cloud journey is just beginning, but the bottom line is
available through the OpenContrail open-source project.
already revealing itself. “The projected return on investment for
The Contrail product family includes Contrail Networking,
a simple, open, and agile SDN solution that automates and
orchestrates the creation of highly scalable virtual networks , and
Contrail Cloud Platform, a cloud orchestration and management
solution. With Contrail Networking, it’s simple to create virtual
networks that integrate seamlessly with existing physical networks.
Symantec can avoid vendor lock-in with an open architecture
because Contrail Networking integrates with Symantec’s choice
of hypervisor, orchestration system, and physical network.
Automating the creation of virtual networks to interconnect the
cloud platform also increases agility. And, greater insight into
network analytics is essential to establishing and meeting cloud
the new cloud platform is in the seven figures,” says Hallett. “We
will become more efficient in how we deploy infrastructure as we
go from tens of petabytes to hundreds of petabytes of storage.”
Next Steps
“One of the greatest things that open source has allowed us to
do is change our engineering culture,” says Hallett. “The notion
of peer review, transparent and open in the way you design and
build code, is very good for software quality. It’s also good for the
speed with which we can build and adopt. It’s brought a whole
new level of talent into our organization. We’ve seen a creative
influence just because we’re using open-source technologies.”
Symantec is well on its way to success. “We have a two-year
service levels.
roadmap of additional features that we’re going to deliver to our
Business Results
customers,” says Hallett. “As we build out data centers globally,
Network agility is a critical enabler of business agility at
Juniper has been a great advisor to help us understand the data
Symantec. “As we’re looking at deploying hundreds and hundreds
center migration and help us understand best practices.”
of applications and workloads globally to support everything
we do, the network is the most important part,” says Hallett.
For More Information
“We’re trying to give more control to the product developers so
To find out more about Juniper Networks products and solutions,
they can determine their network design patterns and build it
please visit www.juniper.net.
into their applications. By giving more control to the applications
development team, it takes the friction out of the relationship
with the network team. It means we’re able to deploy the network
faster. We’re able to do it repeatedly. And we can take out the
manual mistakes that are often seen when you’re configuring
network devices.”
To find out more about OpenContrail and to download the code,
please visit www.opencontrail.org.
About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks is in the business of network innovation. From
devices to data centers, from consumers to cloud providers,
Hallett is an inaugural member of the OpenContrail Advisory
Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that
Board, which is made up of the top contributors and stakeholders
transform the experience and economics of networking. The
that are leading strategic priorities, community evolution,
company serves customers and partners worldwide. Additional
development roadmap, and project governance.
information can be found at www.juniper.net.
Corporate and Sales Headquarters
APAC and EMEA Headquarters
Juniper Networks, Inc.
Juniper Networks International B.V.
1133 Innovation Way
Boeing Avenue 240
Sunnyvale, CA 94089 USA
1119 PZ Schiphol-Rijk
Phone: 888.JUNIPER (888.586.4737)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
or +1.408.745.2000
Phone: +31.0.207.125.700
Fax: +1.408.745.2100
Fax: +31.0.207.125.701
www.juniper.net
Copyright 2014 Juniper Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Juniper Networks, the Juniper Networks logo, Junos
and QFabric are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
All other trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their
respective owners. Juniper Networks assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracies in this document. Juniper
Networks reserves the right to change, modify, transfer, or otherwise revise this publication without notice.
3520523-001-EN Dec 2014