Juniper networks have always been a favorite among the service provider crowd. If we take a step back and look at the service provider vertical, it would make sense that automating network equipment is on the top of their list of requirements. Before the dawn of cloud-scale data centers, service providers were the ones with the most network equipment. A typical enterprise network might have a few redundant internet connections at the corporate headquarter with a few hub-and-spoke remote sites connected back to the HQ using the service provider's private MPLS network. To a service provider, they are the ones who need to build, provision, manage, and troubleshoot the connections and the underlying networks. They make their money by selling the bandwidth along with value-added managed services. It would make sense for the service providers to invest in automation to use the least amount of engineering hours to keep the network humming along. In their use case, network automation is the key to their competitive advantage.

In my opinion, the difference between a service provider's network needs compared to a cloud data center is that, traditionally, service providers aggregate more services into a single device. A good example would be Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) that almost all major service providers provide but rarely adapt in the enterprise or data center networks. Juniper, as they have been very successful, has identified this need and excel at fulfilling the service provider requirements of automating. Let's take a look at some of Juniper's automation APIs.