|
By Beth Schultz
04/23/01
Juniper Networks' IP vision of a single IP infrastructure serving all kinds of networked applications paid off in 2000. On that vision, it delivered five hardware platforms and seven software releases since its founding in 1996. This earned the company a solid reputation among service providers - 225 are its customers - and helped make Juniper the fastest-growing Network World 200 company among those with revenue of $500 million or more in 2000.
Juniper closed 2000 with $674 million in revenue, a 556% increase over 1999 revenue of $103 million. Such results put Juniper ahead of Exodus Communications, No. 2 on the list of fastest-growing companies with revenue of $500 million or more. In comparison, Exodus hit a 238% increase from 1999 to 2000. Juniper's revenue lands it at the No. 83 spot in our NW200 ranking.
A growing market put Juniper over the edge last year, says Marcel Gani, CFO at the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet backbone router vendor. Previously, most of Juniper's revenue came from top-tier service providers.
But in 2000, the company began conducting business with a wider variety of service providers, many of them small. He says only one customer accounted for more than 10% of revenue last year.
Juniper may find it tough maintaining such growth in 2001, given the troubles hounding many service providers, but did well in the first quarter. It posted revenue of $332.1 million, up 420% over the same period in 1999.
And Wall Street believes Juniper will continue to grow faster than its competition. Analysts predict the company will about double its earnings for the calendar year 2001, compared with a 35% reduction expected industrywide, according to online stock research sites.
| 
