Juniper range open to NetScreen VARs
Vendor offers three WAN routers and firewall/DSL router
Juniper Networks has opened its product range to NetScreen resellers, with four new offerings.
The routing vendor completed its acquisition of NetScreen, a specialist security appliance manufacturer, in April.
Juniper's new line-up includes three WAN routers aimed at companies that want to own their own customer premises equipment (CPE), and a combined firewall and Digital Subscriber Line router.
The new J-Series WAN routers use Juniper's JUNOS operating system and are intended for mission-critical networks, according to Benjamin Ellis, Juniper's head of product marketing in EMEA.
The products are intended to fit in with NetScreen's old channel. Juniper originally sold through large systems integrators and other vendors, such as Siemens, Ericsson and Lucent.
"The J-Series is aimed at taking on Cisco, just as Juniper did in the high-end routing arena," said Simon Brown, a director at NetScreen reseller Scalable Networks.
"If there's a market for them, it's a relatively under-distributed product with good margins. You have to admire them for having a go."
Juniper is not the only firm aiming to weaken Cisco's dominance of the WAN routing CPE market.
Foundry Networks recently launched AccessIron, a range of WAN CPE boxes with between two and 16 E1/T1 ports. Juniper's products support uplinks of between eight and 90Mbps.
A number of firms have contested Cisco's hold on the WAN CPE market over the years, mostly unsuccessfully.
"Juniper doesn't have that many boxes left to tick in its drive to get a full product line-up," said Brown. "Switching is the only thing they need now."
The vendor is rumoured to have several LAN switching firms in its sights as acquisition targets.