Juniper partners to benefit from fund injection

Vendor throws more resource into go-to-market development following R&D blitz

Juniper's partners will reap the benefits of the vendor's decision to redirect more funds towards go-to-market development, according to its new channel boss.

Darryl Brick, who joined Juniper in April in the post of UK&I partner director after ending his three-year stint at rival HP, said the vendor is pumping more resource into the channel following a period of heavy investment in research and development (R&D).

"For the past three or four years, Juniper has invested disproportionately in R&D to develop disruptive products and solutions," he said, listing datacentre simplification, mobile access and edge switching as three examples.

"That investment is now coming to fruition and we are diverting a lot of resource into go-to-market. We have to upskill our partners to take these new technologies to customers."

In the first quarter of 2011, Juniper created a five-strong UK field sales team dedicated to helping partners drum up orders in the commercial space and focused on newer products. This includes Juniper's new QFabric Ethernet-based packet switch technology and its Junos Pulse network client.

A team of channel-only solutions engineers has also been created to assist in areas such as architecture and design.

Finally, Brick said Juniper is ploughing more funds into demand-creation activities, such as the Safe to Switch campaign which was launched in June.

The scheme, which is aimed squarely at competitive swap-outs, offers free chassis along with "highly discounted" cards and enables partners to earn training discounts and free service time.

"This allows partners to open up opportunities in new market segments," said Brick.

He targeted Cisco while at HP Networking and confirmed his old foe is still very much in his cross hairs.

"Juniper is laser-focused and agile. Those are our competitive weapons," he said. "Cisco is a great company and Juniper is a willing competitor for those reasons."

Brick also emphasised that his strategy was very much "adopt and go", with the aim to enhance the current partner programme rather than wholesale change.

"I've picked up a high-performing business," he explained. "The growth has been very good. The partner programme has been profitable and worthwhile for partners and has a very simple structure."