UK comes up trumps for Juniper
Networking vendor reveals local revenues grew by two-fifths last year
After celebrating a UK revenue hike of more than 40 per cent last year, Juniper Networks is targeting increased research and development (R&D) spend to help navigate the choppy economic waters.
At a press conference in Alicante, the networking and security vendor claimed global revenue rose 26 per cent in financial year 2008 to $3.57bn. High growth areas include Russia, where revenues jumped 73 per cent; the Netherlands, where sales swelled by 82 per cent; and the United Arab Emirates, where they spiked a massive 87 per cent. Juniper now claims to have more than eight per cent market share globally.
The company´s UK revenue rose 44 per cent last year, way ahead of Saudi Arabia, where the figure was 24 per cent; Germany, where it was 19 per cent; and France, where growth was just three per cent.
Gert-Jan Schenk, senior vice president for EMEA, was heartened by the UK results. “This is fantastic growth in what is a very mature market,” he said. “We have been active in the UK for more than 10 years.”
Schenk also highlighted two key UK contract wins for his firm with Virgin Media and the University of Exeter. The latter was Juniper´s first UK deal for its EX series of switches, launched just over a year ago.
Juniper´s results for 2009´s opening quarter were slightly less encouraging, with revenue tailing off a little on last year to $764.2m. EMEA represents 29 per cent of this figure and Schenk added: “We have been impacted by the global economic crisis, but we have responded really well to the challenges.”
Schenk asserted that continued emphasis on product development was the best way to negate the testing economic conditions. He revealed Juniper´s R&D investment is set to leap from $648m last year to $840m in 2009.
“Last year we delivered a whole set of new products,” he said. “We added to the switching range and launched the world´s fastest and biggest firewall. We also continued to diversify our customer base.”
“This year we are highly focused on research and development. We strongly believe this will help us to come out stronger when the market picks up.”