Juniper comes of age?

“Juniper is doing a good job of positioning itself in the top two or three players in the marketplace,” remarked principal analyst at channel analyst firm Canalys, Alastair Edwards.

Edwards believes that Juniper’s size – and relative simplicity of its organisation – makes it is easier for some partners to do business with compared to its dominant rival. However, he warns: “As Juniper broadens its portfolio, becomes a platform architecture player and becomes more mature, it will find itself with the same challenges as Cisco does in serving partners across a huge portfolio.”

The new channel-focused approach seemed to go down well with Juniper partners in attendance at the event. “I’ve not known a Juniper conference with more energy,” commented James Morgan, MD of long-time Juniper partner Imtech. “There’s a lot of positive aggression, I’ve found it very encouraging.”

Work in progress

Meanwhile, Juniper execs admit they still have work to do on developing its partner programmes, describing its channel engagement as s a work in progress. “It’s a transition from the R&D lab to the market, which will probably take 18 months,” maintained Brick.

“We’re putting formalities in place, some structure, some programmes, some compensation models, some marketing,” he says, adding he has a business plan for every managed partner in the UK for 2012. It’s never been done before,” he added.

“Growing up comes with side effects, and that will happen. But I’ll have dealt with it before and will hopefully spot it early enough and know how to deal with it.”

Nevertheless, with the majority of its business still geared towards service providers, some question where how the firm will manage its relationships with its enterprise VARs. However, according to Brick, Juniper is set to split its service provider and enterprise businesses down the middle in the UK this year: “It’s gone from 80/20 to 60/40 to a target of 50/50,” he told Channel Pro.

According to Helfer, Juniper will reward partners for “doing more” that includes getting on board with the new marketing programme, registering opportunities and getting involved earlier in the sales process. “For us to help out partners sell their services, that needs to happen earlier in the sales process…We want partners to realise it’s not just about who gets the PO, it’s about how we’re partnered together early in the process.”

Helfer said another priority is “making sure [partners are] trained and certified, not just on our products but on their solutions. It’s a bit myopic for us to think that just because they’ve got our certification, it makes the world a bit better. It’s about how our products are making their services and solutions better.”

Edwards believes Juniper has “a big opportunity” in the switching and routing market, as theoretically there is a lot of market share to go after, but warns that Cisco “has regained momentum after a difficult transition process – it won’t be that easy to take share.”

With Juniper is set to mark its sixteenth birthday next month, the company clearly has matured over the last year in terms of its market positioning. While its channel growing pains may not be completely over, industry watchers can likely expect more disruption to the networking space in 2012.