In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Dear Vorticians,
At this week’s Interop in Las Vegas, the CEO of one tech company told me the conference felt “like the Juniper-Cisco show.” It was an apt description.
The show floor was buzzing with conversation and speculation about Juniper’s intentions in the enterprise IT market and what Juniper’s moves will ultimately mean for Cisco and its customers. The dialogue was fueled in large part by the company’s double acquisition the previous week of Peribit and Redline Networks. Executives from other network companies wanted to share views on how the deals will affect their market slices (“this really validates our space,” was the typical defensive response) and to predict what other pieces of the portfolio Juniper would fill in next. Will it be a switching company? Something in the wireless space? More security?
About the next acquisition, Juniper isn’t talking. Company executives told me that the focus is on “their core excellence,” which is in solving “really complex problems.” Such problems include advanced routing – where the company has its roots – security, which the company began to address through its earlier acquisition of NetScreen, and application assurance. The latter refers to improving and accelerating application performance and is the rationale behind the acquisition of Redline, which offers so-called application front-end technology for Web apps, and Peribit, with its WAN optimization tools.
That “really complex problems” and “core excellence” stuff sounds good, but what Juniper is undertaking is a classic flanking maneuver familiar to anyone who’s studied military tactics.
Juniper already owns a big piece of the service provider market and it’s now greedily eyeballing the big enterprise network space that Cisco has had pretty much to itself for several years. But, as any strategist would tell you, you never attack your enemy at his strongest point. You hit the enemy’s flank, finding gaps to penetrate, then encircle. Cisco’s stronghold is in enterprise switching, where it commands a ridiculously large market share. So, Juniper is moving up the computing stack, tackling problems beyond Layers 2 and 3 where Cisco isn’t as powerful.
There’s a critical difference in worldview between Juniper and Cisco. These days, Cisco is talking about how the network must become more intelligent and provide more services, like security and virtualization, among other things. (A position articulated by Mike Volpi, Cisco senior vice president of routing technology, at last October’s VORTEX conference.) And the company has a lot riding on getting customers to buy into that vision.
Au contraire, Juniper says it’s happy to let someone else (Cisco, Huawei, Dell, whomever) deliver a fast, cheap, dumb Layer 2/3 network while it delivers higher-value components that provide the intelligence, acceleration and security.
Cisco, which lately has spent a lot of its energy and marketing dollars courting SMBs and so-called “business decision makers,” is going to have to pay more attention to the big enterprise customers that have become the apple of Juniper’s eye. It’s imperative that Cisco educate them – and convince them to invest – in its vision for the new data center and intelligent networks. If it can’t, Cisco will fail to deliver the rich margins the company and its investors have enjoyed for years. The dumb pipe business stinks unless your entire operation is geared for that game from the shipping dock up.
But this is no walk in the park for Juniper, either. The company has thin brand awareness in the enterprise and it faces a long slog getting potential customers to understand its alternative vision of the world (one that, to its benefit, also involves service providers, thanks to the Juniper-led Infranet Initiative). Juniper also faces the challenges of stitching together multiple, diverse technologies into a cohesive, well managed whole. That’s no mean feat, but if Cisco can do it, why not Juniper?
A Cisco executive at Interop opined that the whole Cisco/Juniper thing “is overblown.” Absolutely true – for today. But the fact that Juniper has created so much buzz indicates not only that many people believe the company stands a good chance of threatening Cisco, it also speaks to an eagerness for an alternative to that five-letter network company and the desire to see the world order shaken up more than a bit.
One key question for me is whether Juniper can succeed if it doesn’t own the actual switched network – whether dumb or intelligent. Can the company really gain control in the enterprise if someone else still provides the most basic elements of connectivity? Can customers maintain strategic relationships with two major network players?
During an Interop panel discussion called Survivor: Las Vegas, my speakers were split over whether Juniper would buy a second-tier switching company, say an Extreme or Foundry. And they were divided in their assessments of how successful Juniper will be in the enterprise, with most feeling that Juniper’s prospects are pretty darn good.
In any event, I’m fascinated by the donnybrook that’s shaping up here. The competitive fireworks will lead to better alternatives for customers in the years ahead and a whole heck of a lot more speculation and prognostication.
On that front, what’s your take on the Cisco/Juniper battle? Share your thoughts, as always, at mailto:jgallant@vortex.net.
Bye for now.
