Juniper boosts MDF and overhauls marketing tools

Vendor says it has upped MDF by a quarter this year as it spruces up its Partner Center and Marketing Concierge portals

Juniper Networks has revealed it has dished out 25 per cent more marketing development funds (MDF) to EMEA partners this year despite its recent restructuring drive.

The networking vendor also used its Partner Marketing Academy event to unveil a raft of improvements to its Marketing Concierge and Partner Center portals, the latter of which it admitted resellers had found hard to use.

"There has been a lot written about Juniper in the media in the last year," Matt Hurley, vice president of worldwide partner and field marketing at Juniper, told CRN, referencing the arrival of a new Juniper CEO last November and the firm's subsequent restructuring drive.

"But on the partner side - and partner marketing specifically - we have added to our MDF pots for our partners, added to our campaign-operated dollars and added headcount to our Partner Group."

Several new marketing goodies designed to put partners on an even footing with Juniper's own staff were unwrapped at the event, which was held in Florence earlier this week. This follows its move to unite partner and field marketing under Hurley's leadership after he joined in April.

Juniper's Marketing Concierge portal will now map to Juniper's go-to-market model so that new content reaches partners simultaneously with Juniper's own staff, Hurley said, including for its current campaign on private cloud. Market intelligence on 12 archetypal user cases will also be shared with partners, and they will soon be able to use the tool to customise their campaigns.

"In the past, partners really did get things at a late and drifting time after we'd announced them," Hurley explained. "Now we will come to market with one main campaign a quarter and partners will be completely linked to that engine."

Later in the day, Hurley (pictured) told assembled partners that Juniper is also revamping its Partner Center, which he admitted had been "terrible" in terms of user experience.

"You get stuck; you can't get out; you have to control-alt-delete your computer," he said. "We have invested a large amount of money in the last three months cleaning up the user experience of that tool and it will go live somewhere in the November timeframe."

Juniper is also now offering to write case studies for its partners and already has 26 of these in the works since it announced the scheme a few months ago, Hurley said.

All marketing initiatives have now been united under the "Marketing for Business Growth" moniker, which has three pillars: Educate, Equip and Grow. Any initiative that didn't fit this new framework has been discarded, Hurley said.

David Silke, vice president of EMEA marketing, said the event, which was attended by more than 50 resellers, is designed to recognise the key role marketing pros can play in building Juniper's channel business.

"When I joined Juniper a year and four months ago, it was pretty obvious that we really needed to connect with partners, not just at the business level, but with the marketing side," he said.

"We're here to talk about how marketing can really make a difference to the business, versus it just being a support function, which I really disagree with."