Juniper Sets Sights On Nortel Partners

For Nortel partners that do defect, Vitagliano offers the promise of continued investment in the channel and partner profitability, an important area where Juniper recently ranked first in our Annual Report Card for network security appliances. Juniper also received high praise for communication, revenue, its partner portal and services opportunities.

"First of all, we work really hard to earn partners' business," he said, adding that "we know how to team and we know how to work in the marketplace."

Vitagliano pointed to the three years Juniper has spent developing its solid channel foundation and its ever-growing product portfolio, which in the last year has seen the end-to-end story come together with the addition of its first ever enterprise Ethernet switching line, the EX Series, the integration of its security offerings with the JUNOS operating systems and its recently unveiled data center solutions strategy.

And for partners who do make the jump to Juniper, Vitagliano said Juniper is ready with training and enablement offerings, Fast Track certification plans, Webinars, demo kits and a Juniper conversion kit to get them up to snuff as fast and as cost-efficiently as possible. Additionally, financial incentives, details of which have not been released, will also be offered, Vitagliano said.

"We've put together a beneficial Fast Track program and set of customizable incentives to make it as easy as possible for you to become a J-Partner," Vitagliano wrote in the letter to Nortel partners.

"This isn't just about targeting new partners and different partners," Vitagliano said. "It's an overall plan to invest in programs and offerings and more resources."

Blaine Raddon, Juniper's vice president of U.S. sales, agreed, and said the big picture is to get the Juniper name on more partners' radar screens.

Vitagliano and Raddon both said critical areas like networking infrastructure and security won't be hit as hard in the downturn. Instead, partners will be called on to help their customers not only fortify those critical areas, but to also help them find cost-savings options, enabling partners to bring more value to the table.

"It opens up the door in that customer to sell more products," Raddon said.

Overall, Raddon said Juniper's partner base is confident that it will weather the economic storm, despite the air of uncertainty.

"Our partners have a strong sense that they can make it through this," he said.

Vitagliano also noted that partners are approaching current market conditions with "cautious optimism," and said the onus falls on Juniper to enable partners to succeed despite the current climate.

"There clearly is a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace," he said. "No vendor can control the external environment. What we can control is how we approach it. We know partners have a lot of choices and we know we have to earn our partners' business. It's critical that partners recognize that we're going to be there, we're going to be consistent and we're going to be a vendor that partners can depend on in good times and bad."