Juniper heats up battle in Thai climate

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.

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