Juniper’s Marketing Epiphany

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I had a chance to sit down with channel veteran Frank Vitagliano in New
York a couple of weeks back. Vitagliano, as many of
you know, was a mainstay among IBM channel
executives for more than 20 years, and for the last four years has been heading
up Juniper’s channel program—more like crafting it, actually.

Under Vitagliano’s stewardship, Juniper’s channel has grown and its partners
have enjoyed nipping at Cisco’s heels as a solid alternative in the core
networking infrastructure space. The company’s aspirations have accelerated
these days, as it seeks to grab more share of the market. Case in point: the
recent fanfare at the New York Stock Exchange, where Juniper executives staged
a well-executed and ambitious rollout of new technologies, products and
strategic direction across the breadth of its current portfolio and beyond.

Vitagliano described that event as a coming-out party of sorts for Juniper.
Marketing and promotion have not been the company’s strong suit, a weak point
that directly impacts partners in the field.

“We didn’t have a great story,” he told me at lunch after the event. “We
need to be able to tell partners what our vision means. My mission is to
continue to articulate, in simple ways, ‘Why Juniper? What’s the value prop?’”

This also means providing partners with more marketing air cover, he said.
Ideally, end customers will have heard of Juniper before a partner steps in the
door to discuss business—and that’s a responsibility that both Juniper and
partners shoulder.

Marketing is one of those pillars of business that often gets neglected by
solution providers. In Juniper’s case, we have a vendor that is acknowledging
not doing the best job marketing itself, which is, frankly, refreshing. We all
know that selling the market share leader is often a no-brainer precisely
because of customer familiarity. But how many solution providers would rather
resell a No. 2 or No. 3 brand to recoup what are often better margins and
greater incentive rewards?

After decades at IBM—a corporate household
name if there ever was one in the tech industry—Vitagliano sees that marketing
cannot be taken for granted if you’re trying to stand out against the market
leader. As a channel partner, what’s your role? How often do you let your
vendors know what you hear—and what you DON’T hear—about their brand out in the
trenches?