Partners are extremely valuable to take Juniper to new domain and verticals

In a candid interaction with the DQ Channels, Mrityunjay Kumar, Country Director, Enterprise and Channel Business (India-SAARC), Juniper Networks sheds light on company’s channel policies and future roadmap.

Being a leading networking company, how do you align yourself with the Smart City concept?

Mrityunjay Kumar: Being a networking company, there are lots of opportunities for Juniper. This is an infrastructure which is being built for over one billion people. The complexities and the scale involved is enormous. Therefore, it is exciting for us because we really fit the bill when it comes to building mission critical, scalable and high performance networks. We see a lot of excitement with Juniper playing a crucial role in some of the initiatives of Government of India. I see huge potential for Juniper to come at front and center and enable the government execute these projects successfully.

How do you gear up to capitalize on growth opportunity brought up by the next Generation technologies? How do you align with IOT and SMAC which is a big buzz in town currently?

Mrityunjay Kumar: Juniper’s history has been a history of innovation. We have been innovating in all spheres of our lines of business. We feel that we are geared up to lead this transformation into the next era. Therefore, relevancy for Juniper products for customers and partners is high in terms of partnership. We also ensure that we are providing cutting edge technologies ahead of time. We are enabling the customer transition to cloud. We have a great focus on building cloud that is open, elastic, simpler and making sure that it is built in such a manner so that the real benefit of cloud such as operational efficiency and agility is achieved. We see a critical role for Juniper in building massively scalable cloud and we are working very closely with those cloud providers and Telco who are looking to virtualize their edges. We are working with several SaaS and IaaS providers for building massively scalable data centers. We see a clear role for us in enabling cloud and making sure that our Telco customers, large enterprise customers, government and banking customers really take us as a partner in this journey. We have a lot of technology partnerships and we work with several partners and technologies to really take solution to the next level of simplicity.

The software defined concept is still being evaluated. So how soon you think it will become a reality?

Mrityunjay Kumar: The real benefit of cloud will be realized when one will start to enable technologies around SDDC, SDN and SDS.  We are at the right place to make it happen. We have 40 plus customers already engaging with Juniper at SDN trials and this number is growing every month. We see that adoption is happening, however, there is lot of education the companies like us need to do.

Does this call for realignment of your marketing strategy?

Mrityunjay Kumar: We believe that we have got excellent products and our strategy is aligned to address the business needs of our customers. Our partners are crucial for our strategy. Partners listen to Juniper and embrace innovation. For the benefit of both the company and our customers, we keep our strategies simple and aligned to the right vertical market. Our marketing is playing important role in getting brand visibility in front of the customers.

Where does India stand in terms of adoption of emerging technologies?

Mrityunjay Kumar: India is pretty much at the right pace. There is a great amount of awareness among Indian CIOs and it is across the vertical markets we operate in.

You mentioned that Juniper has a vertical focused approached. So how you make sure that partners build those expertise as per technology? How do you give them a push so that they are at par with the changing trends in the market?

Mrityunjay Kumar: We have very vibrant channel policies through Juniper Partner Advantage (JPA) program. JPA is aligned to the vertical markets we are engaged in. We enable our partners to be ready for future and for successfully embracing change.  We have a combination of partners, right from large SI partners to value added regional partners. Partners are extremely valuable to Juniper for successfully taking the company into new domain and verticals, where we want to grow. We incentivize them more. They are invited in the Juniper internal summits. Partners who work with Juniper have good amount of profitability. We will continue to focus on building skills for partners in new technology areas like SDN/NFV/NG Security etc. and work with them to successfully roll out these projects going forward.

What are your business plans ahead in 2015?

Mrityunjay Kumar: We will be looking at new verticals. We have built innovative solutions that are relevant to customers and partners. We are looking at very focused vertical markets.  Telcos, Web services, Cable, Banking and Finance, Govt, IT/ITes are the key focused areas for us in 2015. Apart from that, automation is a key thrust area for Juniper. We are going to build massively scalable data centers. We are a pure play IP networking company and will continue to innovate and bring new solutions in routing, switching and security ". To deliver these innovative solutions to solve customer's business challenges, we will work closely with our partners and enable them to deliver remarkable customer experience.