Click to see: Scott Kriens, Juniper CEO

It's been 10 years since Juniper made the bold move to become a service-provider routing alternative to Cisco, and now the company is challenging its rival in the enterprise. On the eve of that anniversary, CEO Scott Kriens shared some reflections and projections with Network World Editorial Director John Gallant and Managing Editor Jim Duffy.

Have you accomplished everything you sought to accomplish in 10 years?

I wouldn't claim to have seen the bubble and the explosion and everything that gave us the opportunity to launch Juniper the way that we did. As we push $2 billion [in revenue] and 4,000 people, and we're in 75 countries, that's more than I had in my mind 10 years ago. I knew we had an opportunity, but I didn't know we could turn it into what it's become - certainly not in the time that it's taken to do it.

Over the past 10 years how has routing evolved and how has that evolution created opportunity for Juniper?

One of the things we debated 10 years ago was [whether] to call it routing at all. Routing was born in the 1980s to convert protocols between IBM and Apple machines, and had nothing to do with the massive scale of multiservice IP infrastructure. We didn't try to change the whole world on the first day, so we called them routers. But this global, multiservice IP infrastructure has not only changed the world for service providers; it's changed the world for government, for research and education, for consumers, for businesses, for enterprises. There's a common thread through here, and it's based on having a network which knows the source and destination of all things, and if one allows that to be the definition of routing, then that has changed the world fundamentally.

What accomplishments are you most proud of and what were your disappointments?

Accomplishments: I would say growth of the culture and the people we've had an opportunity to either work with and to work alongside. That's been employees, it's been investors, it's been customers, all of us. To me, that's far beyond whatever we've delivered in the way of technologies or revenues.

Disappointments: Our greatest challenge is how do we hold that culture and consistency and passion across those 4,000 [employees] and 75 countries. It was easy when it was 40 [people] and one room. It's been hard to stay as closely connected to every employee and every customer. I'm not sure how realistic it is to try to do that, but I can't name every person in the company anymore.