Cisco Nexus and Juniper QFX Series Switches both compete in the networking solutions category. While Cisco Nexus is favored for its extensive features and data center capabilities, Juniper QFX stands out for cost-effectiveness and chipset performance.
Features: Cisco Nexus is celebrated for its stability, scalability, and innovative features like VDCs and VxLAN, making it a top choice for data centers. Additionally, it offers robust support for virtual networks. Juniper QFX is recognized for its scalability and flexibility powered by Broadcom chipsets, as well as the integration of EVPN-VXLAN, enhancing its performance and making it cost-effective in network environments.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Nexus could improve in licensing procedures and integration with non-Cisco products. Its GUI complexity and high licensing costs are also noted for enhancement. Juniper QFX can benefit from a simplified user interface and better pricing structures. The deployment and upgrade procedures could be made easier to eliminate existing challenges.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Nexus offers reliable technical support with a global presence, ensuring quick resolution of issues in critical situations. Its established infrastructure can facilitate smooth deployment for large enterprises. Juniper QFX also provides strong technical support but may vary based on OEM relationships. Both systems are fairly easy to deploy.
Pricing and ROI: Cisco Nexus is often seen as expensive but provides a solid ROI due to its reliability and feature set. Its premium pricing reflects its high-quality services, although its licensing model complexity is a drawback. Juniper QFX, while also perceived as costly, offers more affordability compared to Cisco, especially with enterprise network discounts, providing an efficient and scalable solution for extensive networks.
Speeding up our response times and reducing errors and incidents with automation and available APIs.
Other brands might break after three or four years, but with Juniper, I can use it until now, around nine years, and it's still very usable and very stable.
The normal ROI customers work with is five years unless there is a major change in technology.
For us, we have a time advantage because we know the solution, and the technological refresh is easier.
The technical support of Juniper is very helpful because if we have some big issues, we can raise P1 or P2 tickets, and the response from Juniper is very fast.
Sometimes parts are not available in stock, then you have to wait for replacement time.
For any kind of environment, this scalability is extensive.
Initially, the stability of Cisco Nexus, particularly with the ACI, was problematic due to unstable codes, requiring replacements.
Juniper has better performance than any other networking product as far as performance is concerned in the router area.
It might be pretty expensive for other companies.
The solution is on-premises and stable.
When I talk about data centers, which are critical infrastructure and centralized application hubs, the Nexus platforms should be highly stable.
My personal opinion is that if anyone wants to work with a Layer 3 fabric in a data center, they should choose Juniper because working with ACI and APIC is very complex in the Cisco part.
I would like to see other cheaper plans for the license on the QFX series.
The price of Cisco Nexus is on the higher side due to the premium services Cisco offers.
All solutions are very expensive and not an economy solution.
We are a number one, tier-one partner of Juniper. Therefore, we normally get better discounts than with Cisco because we don't have the level one partnership with Cisco.
It has helped streamline network-related operations with its automation and API capabilities.
For us, we have a time advantage because we know the solution, and the technological refresh is easier.
I would recommend Cisco Nexus for large enterprises and the government sector, as they can afford it.
We can use it for a long time without any broken devices or errors on the system.
They work with EVPN solutions, providing a Layer 3 fabric, which is a very good capability.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Juniper QFX Series Switches | 11.8% |
| Cisco Nexus | 15.3% |
| Other | 72.9% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 19 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 17 |
| Large Enterprise | 82 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 5 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 1 |
| Large Enterprise | 2 |
QFX Series Switches deliver industry-leading throughput and scalability, an extensive routing stack, the open programmability of the Junos OS, and a broad set of EVPN-VXLAN and IP fabric capabilities. With QFX, you’ll find premier solutions for data center spine-and-leaf, campus distribution, core, and data center gateway and interconnect switching.
Rethink data center operations and fabric management with turnkey Juniper Apstra software in your QFX Series environment. You can automate the entire network lifecycle to simplify design and deployment and provide closed-loop assurance. With Apstra, customers have achieved 90% faster time to deployment, 70% faster time to resolution, and 83% OpEx reduction.
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