Juniper Networks and Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, are partnering for a new Network Function Virtualization cloud platform, based on OpenStack and the Contrail Software Defined Networking (SDN) controller.

The new platform is an extension of an existing partnership between Juniper Networks and Canonical.

"Juniper has been selling a product called Contrail Cloud that is powered by Ubuntu from base server operating system point of view," Ankur Singla, corporate vice president and general manager, cloud software at Juniper Networks, told Enterprise Networking Planet. "With this announcement, customers will benefit from OpenStack, Linux, and networking support coming jointly from Canonical and Juniper."

Singla was a founder at Contrail Systems, which was acquired by Juniper for $176 million in December of 2012. Juniper has since expanded on the technology and has made it available as open-source.

Singla added that the partnership with Canonical is focused on selling a complete carrier-class OpenStack solution that can be supported from either Juniper or Canonical. From a go-to-market perspective, Singla said that the sales teams on both sides already have a program in place to execute on joint deals, and a revenue share agreement has been put in place to make the entire sale frictionless.

One of the key benefits that Canonical's Ubuntu OpenStack and Linux platforms offer is the Juju orchestration system that makes deployment and management of applications easier. Singla noted that Contrail Cloud has always come with a server management solution that allows customers to easily deploy and monitor many clusters of OpenStack in a highly simplified manner. He added that Server Manager was developed leveraging Puppet for provisioning and Contrail Analytics for monitoring. That said, Singla noted that Juniper has worked with Canonical to add Juju-charms support to allow for simplified deployment of Contrail Networking and Canonical OpenStack.

John Zannos, Vice President, cloud channels and alliances at Canonical, told Enterprise Networking Planet that the Contrail charm is currently under development.

"The intention is to develop a solution where Contrail networking features can be deployed and managed via the one-click build-a-cloud process Autopilot," Zannos said. "The solution will be made available in scenarios where Canonical's distribution of OpenStack is being deployed."

Zannos added that Canonical will be developing a "white-labelled" (Juniper-branded) version of Autopilot, which will be SKU'd for Juniper direct and channel sales.

While Canonical's OpenStack platform has broad applicability for a range of cloud workloads, the joint solution with Juniper has a focus on NFV.

"Contrail Cloud is currently being used in Enterprise and Service Provider cloud environments," Singla said. "NFV is one of the targeted markets where carrier grade availability, reliability, and supportability is a key requirement and this announcement is focused on that."

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.