Juniper Networks will tell partners at its partner summit this week that the
key to continued success is focus on the vendor's high-performance networking
strategy. Juniper also plans to announce new products and enhancements to
the J-partner channel program to help partners execute on that strategy.
Steve Pataky, marketing director of Juniper worldwide channels, said the
vendor has been focusing on a theme of high-performance networking solutions
for more than a year and that the partner summit, being held in Las
Vegas April 27-29, is a way for Juniper to emphasize
the importance of that strategy. He said that changes to the J-partner
program are geared toward providing partners with better tools and education to
help them grow their business through Juniper technology.
Pataky added that the release of Juniper's EX-Series line of switching
products on March 31 will fuel the growth of partners' businesses by doubling
their potential customer base beyond routers and security products and better
enabling them to wrap their own services and integration skills around
Juniper's networking products.
"Now VARs have all the pieces; they have an end-to-end solution,"
he said.
The addition of the EX switches was the "missing link" for
partners to expand from an enterprise networking practice and/or an enterprise
security practice, according to Pataky. The addition of switching
products offers a compelling reason for partners to expand into other Juniper
product areas and develop solutions across the product portfolio, he said.
"The EX switches double the size of our addressable market through the
channel, and for partners it adds credibility to our 'sell solutions across the
portfolio' strategy," Pataky said.
"We want our partners to look at all of the relevant pieces of our
portfolio and take advantage of the cross-selling and the upselling
opportunities to pull together into solutions," he added.
Pataky said making sure partners have the tools and education to understand
the customers they are selling to and how to link Juniper's products with their
own services is one of Juniper's key challenges, but one that enhancements to
the J-partner program can address.
Juniper opens its secret playbook. Find out more here.
There are four new enhancements to the J-Partner program, Pataky said.
The first is the addition of the JUNOS Knowledge Transfer Toolkit, which
provides JUNOS software training to partners' end-user customers. Pataky
said the training doesn't take the place of technical certifications, but does
allow partners to more quickly and cost-effectively educate their customers on
JUNOS software.
The new J-Partner Virtual Lab will give partners free, anytime "virtual
hands-on" access to Juniper's product portfolio for training, education
and customer demos, Pataky explained, allowing them to better sell across the
portfolio and easily present larger, more complex solutions to customers.
Juniper is also announcing a new Sales Specialist Advanced Course for
J-Partner sales engineers, which provides a design and configuration blueprint for
high-performance network infrastructure solutions, according to Pataky.
Finally, the J-Partner Solutions configurator tool speeds technology
deployments by detailing product configurations and migration planning, and
helping partners develop more robust technology sales by focusing on selling
across Juniper's product portfolio, he said.
"We need to connect the dots for partners so they know why it makes
sense to link certain parts of the portfolio together, and also to show them
how to link products together with services to solve problems for
businesses," Pataky said.
To that end, Juniper has also unveiled "solution areas" that
provide technology blueprints for partners in the areas of data center,
adaptive threat management and identity-based network management. These
solution areas offer partners a more targeted selling opportunity, with
specific products tailored to address businesses' pain points.
"We see a trend where lots of vendors are saying to their partners, 'Go
sell solutions,' but then they're left on their own. It's difficult for
partners to weave all those components together," Pataky said.
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