By Alex Scroxton
25 June 2008
Juniper Networks has revealed
its move into the enterprise switching sector paid off during the first quarter
of its fiscal 2008. Juniper’s UK
revenues over the last three months were up 26 per cent compared to the same
period in 2007.
Globally, Juniper made sales
of $822.9m, up 31 per cent on Q1 ’07, with EMEA accounting for just over 30 per
cent of its sales.
The launch of an enterprise
switch portfolio by Juniper back in February was welcomed partly as a fresh
challenge to Cisco, and partly because it gave partners the ability to sell
end-to-end solutions.
Juniper has now upped the
ante again with the expansion of its J-Care technical services package to
include a new set of Advanced Insight Solutions (AIS) a family of
performance-enhancing services that enable remote, proactive network monitoring
by Juniper partners using intelligence built into Juniper’s JUNOS 9.0 software
This comes just a fortnight
after Cisco formally unveiled its own Smart Care monitoring service.
Andrew Slater, Juniper sales
boss at Notts-based Quantix, saw the expansion in the firm’s services less as a
direct attack on Cisco’s business, and more as an attempt to become a
best-of-breed provider.
”They’re trying to get into the top quadrants in the Gartner reports, and want
to become a master of various key technology areas,” he said.
“We’re dovetailing their
services into our own so we can brand it as Quantix and foster a closer
relationship at a technological level,” he added.
Other partners saw the service
as more evidence of a changing attitude to the channel.
“Juniper wasn’t very
partner-centric in the past. They reminded me of organisations like Cisco or
IBM in the bad old days,” said one reseller.
“They were covetous about
their IP, and not keen on partners doing maintenance,” he added.
Juniper was unavailable for
comment.
