Meteoric Rise To The Top

This year, with first-place rankings in both product innovation and partnership, Juniper takes the top spot with an overall score of 71 points, three above the average of 68. Cisco and SonicWall tied with 69 each.

Juniper's highest marks came for product innovation, in which it placed first in five of the six categories, falling behind only in marketability. Juniper tied for first with SonicWall in quality and reliability and with Cisco in services opportunity.

For Juniper, the results are the reward for a year's work restructuring its channel program and working with CMP Channel's IPED program to educate its staff and improve its channel relationships.

"We put in place last year four priorities for channel--pretty basic things, but if you don't set your program up this way and set your philosophy in place this way it's hard to focus on anything," said Frank Vitagliano, senior vice president of worldwide channels for Juniper. "We wanted to grow mutual revenue and profitability with our partners. That was important to us. We also worked on our programs and offerings, ease of doing business and enhanced teaming."

Vitagliano said Juniper had also redesigned its deal registration program.

VARs say they've noticed the positive changes.

"Their channel program has improved radically over the last few years," said Eric Wickberg, director of technical services at Network System Architects, Stoughton, Mass.

"I've been very pleased with their support, and I'd put it up there in the ranks with Cisco. I can't think of a situation where I've had poor response from them or anything less than really qualified people ... I can't really think of a lot of areas where they could improve. They've done a good job managing all of the various products," he said.

Keith Priester, IT manager at Noodle Technology, Oswego, Ill., agreed.

"They're good appliances. We have very good success rates with customers as far as them being happy with the product. I've always had great support. I love Juniper. I'm a Juniper reseller so everything with Juniper for me is great. The only thing that I can see where Juniper lacks is in customer support."

Cisco came in first with 68 points in the support category. Juniper tied for second place with McAfee in support with 67 each.

For Leanne Miller, director of client advocacy for Virginia Beach, Va.-based solution provider Savant, Cisco's high marks in support were no surprise.

"We deal with Cisco support on a daily basis and they're just more equipped to handle the questions that we've needed both in training and in responsiveness and spare parts and things like that. It's not like anything we've seen from anyone else," she said.

Juniper, meanwhile, is not planning to sit on its laurels, but intends to reach out to its VAR community to find out why it didn't receive top marks in support.

"What we're trying to do is understand exactly where the support concerns are coming from," Vitagliano said.