Juniper's channel bosses on vendor's shifting focus towards security

Networking vendor's channel bosses explain how they've benefited from the woes of other vendors in the networking market and why they're shifting to a security focus

Juniper Networks has benefited from increased business from partners thanks to the woes of two of its key competitors - Avaya and Brocade - according to its EMEA boss, Kristian Kerr.

"Clearly, there has been disruption in the networking ecosystem vendor environment for the last couple of years," Kerr said.

"Fortunately, we're a stable player and have been growing, so I think we are benefiting from that."

His response comes just over a week after Avaya UK MD Ioan McRae was bullish in his criticism of rivals making hay out of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy - from which it claims it will emerge by the end of the year.

Kerr was unrepentant.

"When I talk about going out and targeting specific partners in terms of recruitment and on-boarding that's one approach that we have, but we also have partners approaching us," he said.

"They've been partnering with some of these vendors for years and they're not comfortable with the future direction; there's uncertainty over the long-term R&D direction of some of these organisations or as they start coming together to form big mergers and acquisitions [such as Brocade], whereas we're seen as relatively stable."

Juniper's channel exec team has had something of a refresh this year with Kristian Kerr, his SVP EMEA Marcus Jewell and global boss Brian Rosenberg all being appointed during 2017.

Jewell explained that the team's strategy is to reposition the vendor towards being seen as increasingly integral to security, claiming that networks should now be seen as "security devices".

"Security is a key element of what we do. We are one of the few companies in the world that can provide connectivity and agility and also secure that," said Jewell.

"We can no longer look at point solutions as securing the network. The reality is that solutions such as firewalls are not going to stop bad people from getting into your network: the bad things are probably already in, to a certain extent.

"Firewalls won't cut it in the future. Ultimately, we believe that networks will become a security device."

Juniper's global channel boss Brian Rosenberg indicated that a focus on security within a network will only become more acute as the edge of networks become less easily defined.

"Traditional network architecture is really good at stopping threats coming from outside the network, but bad at protecting from within. With the way that business is changing with devices moving in and out of homes, airports, hotels and the office and IoT, the firewall at the edge is no longer sufficient," Rosenberg said.

"We've built an automated framework that works with underlying Juniper networks as well as third-party networks where the firewall becomes a policy distribution enforcement solution.

"That's important because the key for security and networks in the future is automation."

Despite not being a security vendor itself, Kerr added that Juniper is demonstrating its commitment to investing in security and recruiting new security specialist partners with an update to its partner programme - due to launch in the new year.

"We'll be doing this in a number of ways. In terms of distribution, we recently signed Nuvias who are extremely strong in the security space - they can give us access to security partners on a targeted basis for recruitment," Kerr said.

"I'm also going to be allocating resources for some development and acquisition of new partners in the datacentre space. It's all going to be made a lot simpler with our partner programme that we're launching in January.

"Historically, some of these specialist datacentre or specialist security partners might have felt that was a barrier to entry because we were asking them to jump through loads of hoops in terms of getting core certifications. But going forwards they will be able to differentiate themselves and gain identity around just being a security or cloud or datacentre partner."