Juniper not to add new partners to its network

At a time when most vendors are busy expanding their channel network and
bringing more partners on board, Juniper Networks is all set to buck the trend.
Instead the company is happy with the critical mass it has reached in terms of
its channel and will work with the partners it already has rather than add more
to this league.

The idea is to grow with the partners, not create unnecessary competition
revealed the company at the recently concluded APAC J-Partner Summit 2006 in
Bangkok. In fact the underlying message that was flashed to the channel
throughout the event was 'accelerate your business'.

Gary Kinsley, VP-Channels APAC, Juniper made his point all the more clear
with a grand entrance at the summit in a Juniper featured formula one racing
car, complete with smoke, strobe lights and loud music.

“Our strategy to reach the market is 100 percent through partnering and we
have no aspiration to change that. We want to grow with our part-ners,”
commented Eddie Munshull, Executive VP, Worldwide Field Operations, Juniper
Networks.

This was a major point that was stressed upon during the three-day summit.
Reiterating the point Kinsley said, “We want to work with partners to
encourage business as well as help them grow their product portfolio.”

Juniper Networks, which is involved in enabling secure and assured
communications over a single IP network, rece-ntly announced the appoint-ment of
2,200 plus partners in APAC, 100 of them in India, and said it had attained
'critical mass', translated which means that they have sufficient number of
partners to attain their business objectives. Its channel program has been
running for the past two years and in the duration the com-pany had been
aggressively ramping up its focus on the enterprise segment.

Growth strategy

The company is insistent that over-distribution would be harmful for the
growth of the channel and would lead to unhealthy competition amon-gst them. The
Juniper partner-ship advantage ensures that a minimum number of partners are
selected for maximum coverage and revenue.

“Partners too look for value proposition in a partnership. They want
acceptable margins, the opportunity to sell services on the product, training
and information flow, from us. Fewer partners mean margins are protected. While
this strategy would give rise to competitors, data shows otherwise. We are
winning market shares as per various industry analysts like Gartner,” reasoned
Kinsley.

Commenting further on enhancing the relationship between Juniper and the
partner as a growth strategy, Munshull said, “We want to grow mutually in
revenue and profitability. No one is here for charity. Investing in channel
programs is the heart of this strategy. We are very pas­sionate about enhancing
the teaming between Juniper and the channel as duplication is also very
costly.”

Partner support

In stride with the com­pany's efforts to grow with the partners, the
company offers strong partner support in the form of market development fund (MDF),
or financial support. MDF, which steadily increases YoY, helps the partners to
expand Juniper presence in their markets. Dedicated channel marketing experts
are also provided to work with partners on go-to-market strategies, not to
mention the company const-antly culti­vates new markets for its partners.
Support also comes in the form of education programs.

Another big support part-ners get is in the form of tools that help them
understand hidden costs that come with deploying the solution and helps them
over come that. The tools and services, developed in house by Juniper, are not
fee-based and basically help to launch a profitable solution.

“We work with tools and models to do analysis thus helping carriers and
solution providers to become profit-able,” remarked Keith Falter, Financial
and Business Anal-ysis, Juniper. “Our tools acc-ount for all costs and we
think it is the best tool in the indus-try. Other companies offer similar tools
but at a price. Ours is more of a value add to the partner and part of our
strategy to build a relationship and trust with partners,” said Falter. The
company also trains local partners on how to use the tool so that they can do
calculations by them selves later on.

Focus areas

When Juniper started its business a decade ago, there were other several com­panies
venturing in the same space. Today, it claims to be the only one left standing
at the $2 billion plus revenue bracket. While Cisco seems to be the only other
company giving some kind of competition to Juniper, Jeff Lindholm, Chief Mar­keting
Officer, Juniper Networks insisted that they do not perceive Cisco as a com­petitor
since Cisco, having been around for 20 years, would be the likely market leader.

“We have entered the enter-prise segment in the last two years only and
have already got such a huge market share and customer base. More and more
people are now seeing us as a likely alternative to Cisco, with no other players
at this level,” commented Lindholm. Today one third of Juniper business come
from the enterprise segment but the company is looking forward to enhancing this
ratio. “Our target in the coming years in to get a 50:50 percent balance and
we are well on our track to get that,” said Munshull.

Speaking further about the company's target Lindholm said, “We want to
establish Juniper as a thought leader in open IP. We are not looking at mass
marketing but marketing to our customers. Our areas of focus are the existing
custo­mers. Key verticals that we want to focus on are financial services,
governments and R&B.”

(The writer was hosted in Bangkok by Juniper Networks)

Ruth Samson Bangkok, June 2