At Interop, the show floor was abuzz with talk about the growing battle between Cisco and Juniper for the hearts and minds of enterprise customers.

In speeches by their CEOs, and in much of the analysis offered by pundits, the Cisco-Juniper tilt was described as a contest between their one-stop-shopping and best-of-breed approaches. Cisco is vulnerable to market share losses from hot products, particularly in high-growth segments, so its message is all about the value of end-to-end integration. Juniper can't match Cisco's portfolio, so it emphasizes the robustness of its point solutions.

But, in an interesting take, EzeCastle Research says the real battle will focus on how well the companies support the onslaught of Web services applications.

"Web services is where networks and applications converge, " EzeCastle writes. "Cisco has been positioning itself as an element in Web services solutions for some time, but primarily as a suitable network platform, rather than an active participant. [But at a recent] analyst event, [CEO John] Chambers commented that future networks would 'switch messages,' the term used in Web services, and a Cisco engineering [vice president] commented that the network could offload Web services handling from servers.

"Juniper's use of the term 'Infranet' in connection with its recent application access control and security announcement [the Enterprise Infranet] seems to indicate Juniper will be adopting Web services in its enterprise products, as well.

"We think this is the real collision point between the two companies. To get to a higher level of strategic engagement with customers. . . Cisco needs Web services as a bridge between IT and networking. To hop to the next area of strategic importance, Juniper needs to hop to Web services. The firms are on a collision course in the area of Web services support on the network."

EzeCastle lists a number of products that become critical in this battle and predicts a slew of announcements or acquisitions by Cisco and Juniper related to those segments in 2005 and 2006.

When we launched our ongoing New Data Center reporting initiative last year, we committed to helping you understand how services-oriented applications would change the network landscape and the plans of your strategic vendors. Cisco and Juniper aren't the only companies that will morph their strategies to address this sea change in applications, but their fight will be one of the most fascinating and illuminating.

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