Juniper CEO Confident of Future Growth

"We're committed to growing revenue, earnings and cash generation on an absolute basis, as well as our market share, and we intend to do so at the highest level of operating margin as practical," said Scott Kriens, chairman and CEO of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Juniper, during a conference call to discuss the vendor's second-quarter financial results.

Kriens raised the company's full-year revenue guidance to $2.73 billion to $2.76 billion, up from a previous range of $2.6 billion to $2.7 billion. He also increased full-year non-GAAP earnings guidance to a range of 82 cents to 83 cents, up from a previous range of 80 cents to 81 cents.

Meeting the upper-end of the revenue guidance would give Juniper 20-percent revenue growth compared to 2006, when sales hit $2.3 billion.

The brightened outlook comes as Juniper reported a profitable second quarter with double-digit revenue growth.

For the second quarter, ended June 30, Juniper reported earnings of $86.2 million, or 15 cents per share, compared to a loss of $1.21 billion, or $2.13 cents per share, for the same quarter a year ago.

Revenue for the quarter climbed 17 percent to $664.9 million, up from $567.5 million a year ago.

For the third quarter, Juniper expects to report revenue of $695 million to $715 million. Guidance for non-GAAP earnings is 21 cents per share.

Kriens also said the company is actively searching to fill open management positions, including its CFO and chief marketing officer roles. The CFO post has been vacant since Robert Dykes resigned in March. The CMO role was vacated by Jeff Lindholm late last year.

Separately, Juniper earlier this week expanded it enterprise branch office portfolio with the introduction of new routers, security appliances and management appliances.

The vendor's new Secure Services Gateway (SSG) 320M and J-series 2320 router share the same hardware platform but run different operating systems, its Netscreen ScreenOS and JUNOS respectively. The boxes include three modular slots and four Gigabit Ethernet ports. The SSG 320M includes a standard encryption card and offers a 400 Mbps firewall and 175 Mbps VPN. The J2320 supports an optional encryption card and optional IP telephony features.

For larger branches, Juniper launched the SSG 350M and J2350, which also share a common hardware platform but run different operating systems. They include the same features as their smaller counterparts with the addition of two more modular slots, a 500 Mbps firewall and 225 Mbps VPN.

"Using the same hardware platform gives the resellers choice to flexibly react to customer requirements, but as those requirements change, resellers in the field can convert from one OS to the other if customers move from a security-first strategy to now needing a rich routing platform, or vice versa," said Greg Maudsley , product manager for Juniper's SSG line, in an interview with CRN.

Juniper also launched new WAN interface modules and two new management appliances, NSMXpress and MSM Central Manager. The new products are scheduled to ship this quarter.