8 Questions for Juniper CEO Scott Kriens

Kriens: I think it is going to continue and I think what you're going to find is that there's more and more consolidation around the reality that there's no such thing as security by itself: There's network security. Just as ultimately there was no such thing as word processing as a market place, security is destined to become feature and functionality of the network. The opportunity for people who build network operating systems is to demonstrate that to the market place and cause it to happen sooner and not later, but it is inevitable.

CRN: What challenge does Juniper still need to address?

Kriens: Our focus going forward is more education within the marketplace, specifically in the customer environment, as to what's possible with the right partners, and to continue the conversion of the market thinking that you should just make the easiest and safest choice into a strategy instead of making the best choice, and that that absolutely makes a difference to the success of your business. It's more important that we spread that belief across a broader community than it is that we do anything different, and the challenge is how to reach the marketplace with these beliefs, because it's a large market and it's confused by a lot of marketing.

CRN: What do you see, then, as Cisco's biggest weakness, or the area where you can have the most impact against them?

Kriens: I don't think it's a weakness, actually. I think it's just a reality that they've got to find $3 billion or $4 billion or $5 billion a year every year of growth to satisfy shareholders and meet their own goals. That means they have to alienate more and more participants, whether those are other technology companies or whether those are partners, or once partners. And it's not really wrong, it's just that the only way you can get $5 billion a year is to take it from somebody, and so the fact that they have to challenge their partnerships and redistribute the IT spend to their benefit at someone else's expense in dollars of such magnitude is just a by-product of a necessary growth condition. So it's not a weakness, it's just a reality of their challenge that creates opportunity for the market to stop and look at another way to solve problems.

CRN: Much has been made recently of Cisco and Microsoft and do they compete, do they partner, do they do both? Seemingly more it seems they compete. Does that create opportunity for Juniper to slip in while Cisco is distracted with that?

Kriens: I read somewhere where John [Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco] said he thought he had a two-to-three-year lead on Microsoft or something, so it is becoming more visible...Again, I think it's inevitable that these challenges with existing relationships and pre-existing relationships, those relationships have to change. It's not wrong, it's just reality, and by extension, it's opportunity, because it means the market has to stop and look differently at its needs, and for us, that translates into opportunity.