Cisco rival Juniper this week posted Q2 results that indicate a healthy return to spending on both the service provider and enterprise sides of the business. Juniper recorded revenue of $978.3 million for the quarter, up 24% from the second quarter of last year and well ahead of Street expectations of $953.6 million.
Earnings, excluding expenses, charges and other items, came in at $164 million, or 30 cents per share, a penny better than Street estimates and 58% better than last year on a per share basis.
Service provider revenue, which is over 63% of the pie, rose 21% from last year and 5% sequentially. Enterprise, 36% of overall revenue, jumped 31% from the second quarter of last year and 12% sequentially. This indicates strong demand for Juniper EX LAN switch, MX Ethernet router and SRX services gateway product lines.
Juniper is confident heading into the second half of the year. In a prepared statement, CEO Kevin Johnson said the company "continues to execute well" and is realizing "strong momentum in critical growth areas."
In remarks to analysts on the quarterly conference call, Johnson said Juniper achieved record revenue in the quarter and that revenue momentum is expected to continue into the second half of the year. He also said Juniper expects to take share in both the service provider and enterprise segments in the second half.
Johnson said the global economy continues to recover but the pace varies by geography. Juniper saw improved spending in the Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific theatres but Europe specifically continues to lag behind other regions in economic growth. The US is experiencing modest growth, Johnson said.
Nonetheless, demand for networking is increasing, especially in areas of mobility, video, security and cloud computing, Johnson said.
In some key product development areas, Juniper's Project Falcon Enhanced Packet Core for mobile networks will go into trials by the end of this year, as the company expected. Project Stratus, the company's flat data center/cloud computing fabric exercise, is seeing the first wave of product moving into the system test phase. Stratus is expected to generate revenue for Juniper next year.
Juniper said it also doubled the number of "Juniper-powered" managed service provider customers in the quarter to about 35.
The company is forecasting revenue of $1.02 billion -- +/- $20 million -- up 4.25% sequentially, and per share earnings flat to up $.02. Juniper is targeting annual growth at about 20%, vs. Cisco's long term targets of 12% to 17%.
More from Cisco Subnet:
All of today's Cisco news and blogs
Cisco wants to be the standard
Wendell Odom: Tons of Answers at Networkers
Forget Apple. RIM should fear Cisco's Cius
Why You Can No Longer Afford to Consider Presence an Optional Component
The Next Generation of Routing Architecture
Hands on with the Android tablet "Cius" that Cisco announced at Cisco Live
High Availability, Headless Communists, and Other Random Thoughts from Networkers
Lieberman Cybersecurity Bill Could Change IT Procurement
Like RSS readers? Subscribe to the Cisco Subnet RSS feed
Follow all Cisco Subnet bloggers on Twitter.Jim Duffy on TwitterFollow