Juniper Networks maximizes data potential by moving to Tableau Cloud

Juniper Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of AI networking and intelligent cloud solutions, specializing in routers, automation, software, and cybersecurity. The global company has over 10,000 employees and strives to constantly innovate and adapt to better technologies.

Robust and actionable data is key to Juniper's business model and market position. Having quick, easy, and reliable access to high-quality data means that they can be agile and consistently provide top-notch solutions to their enterprise customers.

In recent years, the organization has embarked on a multi-year and multi-faceted digital transformation journey, with a key goal being improved data access. They've focused on the digitization of assets and the use of data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to automate processes, increase productivity, and reduce expenses, all while keeping data secure.

Juniper implemented Tableau Server several years ago to gain insight into their most important data. But as their data volume, users, and usage grew, running Tableau in their on-premises environment proved to be a challenge.

Although Tableau Server provided the company with the freedom to explore data in a trusted environment that was governed and secure, the on-premises server struggled to keep up with ever-increasing internal demand. Juniper's physical servers crashed intermittently, leading to unnecessary downtime, and the company estimates they lost 2,000 hours of productivity per month across their 4,000 internal Tableau users.

The business continued to grow, which meant that the need for data analytics continued to grow. Juniper Networks Senior Data Warehouse Architect Suman Shanthakumar explains, "As the organization grew in terms of data, requirements also grew, got expensive [and we] needed a platform that grew with [our] needs, that would scale."

As part of their digital and cloud transformation journey, Juniper decided to move to Tableau Cloud. They sought stability and wanted to create an internal cloud culture and improve employee productivity. And importantly, Tableau Cloud ensures data remains safe and secure with end-to-end encryption, but also maintains 99.9% availability across the business.

They built a migration and governance roadmap that accounted for analysis, planning and architecture, and created a proof of concept that addressed over 20 critical use cases. They established a framework for content and license governance, and automated license provisioning. To mitigate the complexity of the cloud migration for internal users, the company conducted education sessions with the Tableau Prep tool and leveraged educational materials via Tableau Blueprint. They coordinated with almost 900 content creators and explorers to identify and migrate appropriate content to Tableau Cloud.

The investment in moving to the cloud paid off. Juniper has achieved a more reliable, scalable, secure and cost-effective data analytics solution. By thoroughly planning and accounting for their cloud migration, they've been able to take advantage of phenomenal benefits, and ultimately improve their customer experience and overall company growth.

Juniper has been able to maximize revenue by using Tableau reports. Jonathan Pflaum, Services Management Senior Director at Juniper Networks, says, "We have designed a Tableau dashboard in collaboration with our service finance key stakeholders to measure margin across our service lines of business. This dashboard allows us to drill down to the profitability at the customer level, providing valuable insight when constructing large, complex deal pricing and delivery structures. In the past few years, we have broken records in overall margin in the services business."

From a user standpoint, Juniper teams can now access data insights from anywhere via the Tableau Mobile app, and access to new features and functionality is instant because they no longer have to manually implement new version upgrades. They can leverage that data to make timely, targeted business decisions. Pflaum, explains, "Five years ago, we had no way to accurately measure renewal rates; service sales teams and partners were flying blind."

By implementing a dashboard in Tableau Cloud, Pflaum explains, "[We can] provide this business visibility, slicing data by partner, region, product line, etc. These actionable insights have allowed our service sales teams and partners to achieve world class financial service renewal rates, breaking records two years in a row."

The organization can now auto-scale as needs require, and Tableau can easily integrate with other cloud-native apps. They've seen a 50% improvement in dashboard performance and an 84% reduction in time spent on upgrades and maintenance. There has been a 90% decline in IT support requests. Meanwhile, they've experienced a 125% increase in the ability to run jobs concurrently.

Juniper has experienced over $250,000 in cost savings through license governance and a 90% reduction in license-management resources by employing automated login-based license management. By evaluating and managing access needs, they were able to consolidate dashboards to avoid confusion and ensure that teams are operating off the most up-to-date, business critical analytics, which also resulted in storage and compute cost savings.

According to Juniper Manufacturing Operations Senior Manager Subhendu Roy, they've also leveraged Tableau functionality to pass cost-reduction initiatives along to their customers.

He explains, "In today’s cost-conscious environment, in which customers are constantly tightening budgets, the pressure to deliver cost-reduction initiatives is now intense. To increase cost transparency and identify cost savings opportunities, we built Cost Control Tower using Tableau that integrates data from multiple systems. It serves as the 'single source of truth' and provides a common operating picture across different finished products and customer segments."

By moving to Tableau Cloud, Juniper reports improved data security, but the move to cloud has also enabled the company to identify issues with their supply chain.

According to Roy, "The challenge of supply-chain risk management has been exacerbated by globalization with complex multi-tier dependencies... with more potential failure points and higher levels of risk."

By using Tableau and other solutions, Roy says they've been able to highlight potential risks and correlated impact to business users. He explains, "This has helped us in taking steps to act on supply chain risks and working with suppliers to ensure timely availability of materials, and in turn providing products and services to our customers in a timely manner."

Ultimately, transitioning to Tableau Cloud has helped Juniper achieve a key goal in their digital transformation journey: data accessibility. With fast, reliable access to their data, the company has been able to make informed decisions faster, improve productivity, cut costs, boost their bottom line and manage risk. These advantages provide Juniper with a strong foundation for innovating the AI networking and intelligent cloud solutions of the future.