Juniper: Why VARs Should Switch

Juniper's recent launch of its first line of enterprise Ethernet switches more than doubles the addressable market opportunity that Juniper and its channel partners can chase, said Frank Vitagliano, senior vice president of worldwide channels for the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company.

In addition to the $2.8 billion router and $3 billion security market opportunities Juniper is currently addressing, it now has set its sights on the $6.8 billion switch market, Vitagliano said.

"What's game-changing for you is that these are just the numbers for the actual hardware, or point products if you will. There is a significant opportunity for all of the services you wrap around those installations," he said.

The new EX-series Ethernet Switch portfolio begins shipping this month. Like Juniper's other networking products, it runs on the vendor's Junos operating system, which Vitagliano said one of Juniper's main advantages over its rivals.

Juniper's networking gear "all runs on the same OS, and for those of you in the space, you know how significant that is," Vitagliano said.

Christopher Vilim, president of CoreTech, a networking solution provider in Omaha, Neb., said Juniper's new switch play has piqued his interest. CoreTech works with Hewlett-Packard's ProCurve networking division and Cisco Systems but is not currently a Juniper partner, he said.

"I am very interested. I've heard a lot of good information about them. There's a lot of good world of mouth out there," Vilim said, adding that he wants to get a better feel for how Juniper plans to position its new switches to tackle the SMB market.

Despite Cisco's dominance in the switch market, Vilim said solution providers could be willing to give Juniper a chance.

"They are [dominant], but even just this week I'm getting the feeling that partners aren't as entrenched with Cisco as they used to be," Vilim said.

In addition to the new switch line, Vitagliano also introduced partners to Juniper's new U.S. channel chief, Blaine Raddon. Vitagliano has been filling the role himself since April, 2007.

Raddon said in an interview Show Daily that his main goals are to make sure Juniper can execute on its existing channel plans.

"I'm not here to set the strategy; the strategy is set," Raddon said. "To have somebody now in this position means it's about execution. That can't be done until you have resources in place."

Vitagliano hammered home the importance of all of Juniper's recent changes for solution providers.

"The switch is on at Juniper, and it's going to be a whole new era that we're about to start," Vitagliano said.