Service Provider Networks / Internet Routing / View from the Edge:

Juniper in the enterprise?

Routers show up there and reports of CPE push surface, but company plays up partners.

By Jim Duffy
The Edge, 8/17/01

We're hearing increasing reports that Juniper Networks is about to broaden its reach into the enterprise market.

Juniper has said in the past that some enterprises are deploying its low-end M5 and M10 routers; but at the same time, the company said the enterprise was not a target market for the company.

But that tune has changed - we're now hearing from some of Juniper's initial investors and from its business partners.

The alleged switch is for two reasons. With the sharp reduction in carrier capital expenditures, companies like Juniper need to sell to anyone who's buying. Even though enterprises are also slowing their spending, they're doing so to a lesser degree.

Thus, many companies are trying to figure out how to sell to enterprises. One investor likened it to the Willie Sutton strategy - I rob banks because that's where they keep the money.

The second reason for Juniper's new focus is that large enterprises are not buying IP VPNs for critical applications. The state of the art of service-level agreements, security and quality of service for the carrier IP VPN offerings is inadequate, our sources say.

As a result, some large enterprises are starting to build their own large-scale private IP networks. So enterprises are becoming more attractive targets for equipment providers who build carrier-class boxes.

Still, it may not make sense to some people - like me - that Juniper would dedicate sales people, product development and marketing on the enterprise. Cisco is not vulnerable in the enterprise like it is in the service provider market, in which Juniper is giving Cisco fits (from 0% to 40% market share in 5 years!).

Cisco's stranglehold on the enterprise is evident in the exit/retreat/de-emphasis on the market by traditional enterprise heavyweights.

Plus, Juniper makes routers, not Layer 3 switches for the customer premises core, and certainly not for the wiring closet. As Cisco adds WAN interfaces to its Layer 3 switches for WAN applications - the traditional domain of routers - it doesn't make sense that Juniper would enter a market that's largely moving away from routers and that other enterprise vendors are exiting.

But Juniper's routers are not Cisco's routers - that's why so many service providers have snapped them up. So a Juniper router at the CPE WAN edge may be more prevalent in the future, maybe more so than a Cisco Layer 3 switch with WAN interfaces.

The story remains the same with Juniper: Some of its enterprise vendor and service provider partners - Ericsson and Nortel among them - are selling Juniper routers into the enterprise to maintain IP service consistency between the subscriber and its service provider.

But Juniper is not dedicating direct sales people, product development or marketing to the enterprise.

"We remain focused on carriers and service providers, and three market spaces: core, dedicated access and mobile IP," Juniper spokesman Adam Stein says.