New Juniper Partner Program Emphasizes Enterprise Push: Exclusive

Juniper Networks, a networking giant that has historically counted service providers as its biggest customer segment, is courting enterprise customers with the help of the channel.

To that end, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor is launching a new partner program in March called Juniper Enterprise+ to propel sales growth in the enterprise space, Gordon Mackintosh, Juniper’s new worldwide vice president of channel and virtual sales, told CRN.

"We are looking to drive $50 million dollars of growth in the enterprise over the next 18 months and we are investing about $25 million into that effort," Mackintosh said.

[Related: Juniper Networks: 'We Made The Hard Pivot And Are Now Set For Great Growth' ]

Juniper Enterprise+ will be an exclusive program focused on about 100 partners located globally, Mackintosh said. Enterprise+ will sit alongside Juniper's main global partner program, Juniper Partner Advantage.

The new program will facilitate collaborative selling between Juniper's internal sales team and channel partners to tackle the enterprise space. Juniper is "investing heavily" in support, enablement tools, and building out best practices for selling specific products, such as Mist Systems offerings that Juniper acquired in 2019, Mackintosh said.

Juniper has about 40,000 customers that have bought some Juniper products and services, but the firm would like to see partners go deeper with these customers, he said. "We are going to target [these customers] with digital marketing to develop sales opportunities, and then our virtual sales executives will start co-selling with partners," he said.

Partners in the Enterprise+ program will be identified as go-to partners for Juniper's inside sales teams to work with on larger deals, Mackintosh said.

Juniper took partner feedback into consideration when creating the new program, Mackintosh said. "[Partners] don’t want just leads, they want opportunities, support, enablement and alignment with the sales organization. Those are the fundamentals of success and sometimes partner programs miss that critical sales alignment."

The vendor is also in the process of refreshing its existing technology specializations for the channel. Juniper plans on accelerating the consumption of its specializations to fast-track Enterprise+ partner training with fewer costs, Mackintosh said. "We really want this group of partners to learn at the same speed as the Juniper filed sales organization," he added.

Juniper redesigned its flagship global partner program in November to help partners zero-in on more on software and earning recurring revenue and less on transactional sales, Helda Lopes, head of Global Partner Programs and Marketing at Juniper Networks, told CRN.

Juniper has also recently introduced a new MSP program that Mackintosh would like to see go mainstream. The J-Partner Managed Services Program lets MSPs create, market, and support offerings based on Juniper products, according to Juniper.