Juniper comes of age?
Last week Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) marked a year of transition with its first ever global partner conference.
Describing 2011 as “a year on steroids”, Juniper chief marketing officer, Lauren Flaherty declared the vendor had now joined networking big-hitters Cisco and HP in the “tier one pack”. She told partners gathered at the event in Las Vegas: “We have just done so much in the last year and significantly raised our game. We are now firmly entrenched in that space.”
The view was echoed by the Juniper’s CEO Kevin Johnson (pictured) who said the firm had taken “some significant steps forward in the marketplace...Whether that’s the breadth of the portfolio or the customer reach, brand awareness or engagement with our partners.”
He told Channel Pro: “The company has really established a position in this domain of networking at a time when networking is become more relevant to enterprises and service providers.”
In his only interview outside of the US, Johnson described Juniper still as “an engineering company with bold aspirations.” However, he added: “We recognised for that innovation to have maximum impact in the marketplace, we really needed to evolve our go-to-market capabilities.”
Channel big-hitters
After growing up in the service provider space, the past twelve months saw Juniper radically overhaul its go-to-market strategy in its pursuit of enterprise market share. The vendor realised if it were to successfully target the enterprise, it needed to scale in the form of its channel partners.
To help get the job done, Juniper recruited a team of senior industry execs including Microsoft’s president for Asia Pacific, Emilio Umeoka, who joined as Juniper’s senior VP for worldwide partners, and Cisco’s VP of worldwide partner marketing, Luanne Tierney whose task was to “build a global partner marketing programme from scratch.”
“We wanted to bring senior leaders in,” explained David Helfer, VP, partners EMEA. “If the leadership isn’t senior enough in a channel organisation, it can look like fulfilment. But when you being the right leadership in, it can drive the right behaviour and change management on the partner and vendor side.”
Execs admit that Juniper’s partner engagement hadn’t been a priority in the past, with the firm adopting a ‘laissez-faire’ approach to its channel. However, according to Nick Barley, VP of marketing EMEA: “With leadership comes responsibility… Now with maturity and leadership we are looking to enable them, to work with them and the new tools underpin that.”
Juniper also recruited ex-HP networking director, Darryl Brick, to build Juniper’s channel in the UK and Ireland. According to Brick, the new hires mean the channel now has “a seat at the table” at Juniper. He said: “The channel has a voice, and it is one year old.”
While the firm claims to have seen “huge progress” in its efforts to raise Juniper’s brand in the market, it’s next step was helping its channel to sell the technology.
