Juniper Jumps Into Enterprise Router Market

Juniper said Monday that it expects to sell the new J-series Services Router family through solution providers, including the 400 worldwide channel partners it picked up through its acquisition of NetScreen Technologies, a $4 billion deal completed in April.

"We have to go out to the channel system to determine interest in the product first, and where we find interest we'll be looking to train, certify and then enable [partners through] delivery of sales-enablement tools," said Jim Dolce, executive vice president of field operations at Juniper, Sunnyvale, Calif. Dolce said the process of identifying, training and authorizing partners will likely take until early 2005 to complete.

The company is also making a "significant investment" to refine and enhance its global channel program, adding personnel in channel marketing, development and management, Dolce said.

"I can't put a dollar amount on it, but I can tell you it is a bigger investment than either of the two companies were making as individual companies," Dolce said.

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Dolce expects 100 percent of Juniper's U.S. enterprise business to flow through channel partners. The company deals directly with named U.S. service provider accounts.

The J-series routers, scheduled to ship in September, will run on the company's modular Junos operating system, the same OS that runs on Juniper's carrier-focused products.

New applications such as IP telephony and video are gaining traction and raising the demands on enterprise infrastructure, prompting Juniper to move its carrier-class Junos technology down to the enterprise, Dolce said.

Juniper is initially releasing three models: the J2300 Services Router, a fixed device aimed at branch offices that supports up to an 8-Mbps uplink; the J4300 Services Router, a modular, six-slot device aimed at midsize users that supports up to a 16-Mbps uplink; and the J6300 Services Router, a modular six-slot device that offers more processing power, a redundant power supply and support for up to a 90-Mbps uplink.

The models are priced at $1,900, $4,000 and $9,000, respectively.

Juniper Monday also unveiled the NetScreen-5GT ADSL, a device that integrates security functions such as firewall, IPsec VPN, denial-of-service protection and antivirus with an ADSL interface and WAN routing. Aimed at remote offices, the product is priced at less than $1,000.