Juniper heats up battle in Thai climate

If you were asked to discuss the lives and achievements of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, you could probably talk about the 1969 moon landing with some confidence. However if you were asked to give a short synopsis of Michael Collins you might find yourself struggling for substance. In case you were wondering, Collins orbited the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin performed the first manned landing on the lunar surface.

The relevance of this point centres on the current networking landscape. Cisco Systems is very much the Armstrong and Aldrin of the sector. It is the name every vendor, distributor, reseller and end-user knows when it comes to networking needs. Cisco has a dominance of the networking market, which depending on what analyst you follow, can be accredited at the 70 to 80 percent mark. The remaining market is made up of others Collins, who have spent years watching on as Cisco marked its flag in the networking surface.

However, Cisco does have rivals and these rivals are determined to wrestle over market share. One such contender comes in the form of US-based vendor Juniper Networks.

The Juniper express has been gaining momentum in recent times and the vendor gathered its partners in Phuket, Thailand for its APAC J-Partner Summit 2007. CRN was in attendance to assess the vendor’s progress.

Annual progress
“We knew last year that we had a challenging year ahead, but we have made tremendous progress,” said Adam Judd, vice president for Asia Pacific at Juniper. “We have seen strong growth across APAC, with 40 percent growth in Australia. It is all about expanding market share in the competitive APAC region.”

Judd said he can assure partners they will not see Juniper sell direct in APAC as the firm wants to work with partners.

“70 percent of our business is still going through carriers. Also in the past year 80 percent of our carriers are using 80 percent of our portfolio,” he said.

“The broadband market is moving towards Ethernet and high-speed access. All carriers have realised that selling bandwidth has become a commodity, with the margins decreasing. They are asking how to make their connection with customers stickier and make more revenue.”

Judd said Juniper has put more intelligence in its equipment and expanded its portfolio on the carrier side with most carriers embracing the security offerings.

“The managed services market will be huge in APAC, as businesses want to outsource with IT becoming more complex. The service provider has to look towards managed services as this is not just a trend. We believe a great channel to market is through managed services.”

Judd said managed services will enable partners to have more stickiness to the customer and boost revenue figures.

“We have targeted 400 of the top enterprise businesses in APAC and are driving the Juniper brand into these organisations. These customers are critical for us as they are the reference for others to follow,” he said.

“We are not going after the whole market. The three things you are going to hear from Juniper over and over again are threat management, application performance and controlling access.”

Judd said the market opportunity in threat management is huge and partners have been successful providing firewalls.

“We have also been having success winning some of the largest enterprise business in APAC.

We believe we have the right products and a proposition which allows partners to add value to their business.”

Judd said the Australian market is interesting as there is a wide gulf between the larger channel firms and the niche players.

Carrier strength
“A/NZ has been very successful and the power of the carrier is very strong. Our carrier customers have been a success with players such as Telstra and Optus. Resellers are important to a lot of carriers and that resell business will become more and more common,” he said.

Judd said Juniper will look at acquisitions which enhance the vendor’s value; however it will look towards partnerships before making an acquisition.

“We know security and routing are coming together and will merge. Our partners come from both networking and security. We are working with the traditional security players to get them skilled up on networking and vice-versa,” said Judd.

Gary Kinsley, vice president of enterprise and channel operations for Asia Pacific at Juniper, said: “Everything we do in APAC is through partners. The enterprise market is growing fast and it is logical that we move into the Enterprise market. We are opening offices all over the place, with four in Australia now.”

Kinsley said there is an opportunity to add value to a Juniper sale and it can offer more margin than its closest rival.

“The service side is where money can be made and we don’t want to compete with partners on services,” added Kinsley. “Education and skilling up partners is one of our hot buttons. We have put more than 10,000 people through training this year.”

Stephen Elop, the newly-appointed chief operating officer at Juniper, said he likes to be part of a growing company and industry, and that is why he joined Juniper four months ago.

“There are firms out there who don’t treat their partners right, but Juniper treats people right. I’m here to help the company increase its alignment. We are a small company chipping away at a large market.”

Elop said Juniper is growing rapidly, but it has to make sure it is building correctly so it can scale or it will hit a ceiling.

“Speed is the new currency and you need a dynamic business model. Our contention is that all of this is critical to the network. Our slogan is simple: we will continue to focus on high performance networking.”

Elop said high performance networking centres around providing fast, reliable and secure access to services and applications on a single network.

“We have a tremendous amount of headroom for growth. Our partners are doing a fantastic job in A/NZ, with great relationships with telcos and other providers.”

Elop joined Juniper at the beginning of the year and he most recently served as president of worldwide field operations at Adobe Systems.

“In my previous roles I have spent a great amount of time in APAC and enjoy coming out to the region. We are a small to mid-sized company that is getting larger and I think customers think the same of us. We work closely with partners such as Oracle and SAP,” said Elop. “Our marketing dollars are focused on clear campaigns. First we make sure we have the solutions and ensure the partners have the marketing resources they need.”

Taking on Cisco
What of the networking giant which Juniper is attempting to take on? Adam Judd said: “We are successful as we do what Cisco can’t do and what Cisco won’t do. Our proposition for partners is that we are not going to do everything, but what we are going to do, we’re going to do well.”

Judd said its competitors fall into two categories: Cisco, and niche players such as Fortinet and Riverbed.

“The market is moving towards SOA (service-oriented architecture) and that is bad news for Cisco. That is a huge opportunity for us,” added Judd.

Stephen Elop said: “Cisco is in a very interesting position. It is an incredibly successful company. It is making some big decisions and there is a concern it’s getting too diverse on its focus. People want someone to focus on networking.

“Cisco will depend less and less on partners and go more direct. Our strategy is the opposite of that.”

Elop said Cisco has the well- known brand, but Juniper has the focus on high-end enterprises.

Gary Kinsley said when Juniper performed research into the market, the firm found around 10 percent of customers are hostile towards Cisco, 40 percent are keen to use Cisco, while the rest are in between looking for the best deal.

Taking on Cisco is no understated task. It will be a slow and steady process if Juniper is going to chip away at Cisco’s dominant share. The networking landscape is in a state of transformation and Juniper will be keen to make a name for itself.