Juniper Networks ensuring technical innovations along with its Partners

Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director - Partner Sales, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

As the industry is moving to the cloud, or in some cases hybrid mode, on this backdrop how are you positioned in the cloud networking market?

The next decadeis all about cloud networking.  It has already started, but it is not now, next decade is all about cloud networking, which means that when it comes to network assets or network infrastructure -- it either has to be cloud ready or it has to be cloud now.  So, all our solutions and products fall in these two categories.  In order to support this we have Cloud-ready data center, automated WAN solutions, AI driven enterprise and of course they are all covered with all pervasive connected security.  All these are clearly for our customers who are in either of these two buckets, Cloud-ready or Cloud now.  

When a customer wants to automate the entire network starting from operating system to DC modernization or to business at the heads, Juniper network plays a role. How the production service solution architecture works?

The most important part is from its inception of all our products, we have deployed open standards because there is no proprietary about it. 

So that is why it is very easy for customers to ensure that there is interoperability across the various platforms, and at the same timeCLIs. I know of some of the companies or competitors itself who have different operating systems, and then there is a proprietary CLIs, so even for management of those Partners are the one who typically help customers in ensuring that their networks are installed and they are running right.  So, during this process, if the CLIs are different it actually adds in a whole lot of unwarranted thing. So, that is why across our platforms we have one single Junos operating system.  And I want to now go to the next level, we have virtual network assistant and it is named as Marvis. Now, Marvis comes to us from our Mist portfolio.  Mist is our Wi-Fi portfolio. Marvisis AI enabled kind of assistance. So, what it does is that over the period of time it has gained a lot of knowledge about the various correlations, anomalies or whatever that comes in.  So, as AI it keeps on building its own library and continuously pushing out thesolutions to it.  So we have something called as -- earlier, we started with Wired Assurance. What it means is that you have a Mist client, a Marvis client, where we are able to provide assured service quality of service to the customer for their wireless network. So, Mist scope has now increased not only to wireless, but to our switching portfolio.  And obviously there is a roadmap, we are going to cover various other aspects like automated WAN, DC and all those things.  I am happy to tell you that this is a natural language client.  You don’t need to know the CLIs. You ask the question in English, it will give you answer, solutions.On every Wednesday, on a weekly basis, it continuously keeps coming out with patches and it’s completely applying those patches so that old problems do not happen again.  And this is the industry’s first artificial intelligence virtual.

How you are focused on the cyber security, which is very important nowadays?

Security as it started, earlier it was all about perimeter security like building some barriers like firewalls etc. So, we believe that today security has to be all pervasive that means it has to be available and it has to be part of the overall architecture and every component in the networkshould be able to handle security and its threat.  It is possible because of companies like us, we have been having security portfolio for very long now. There is lot of security related intelligence, which is built over a period of time.  So, as a part of innovation and design all these components of security, the intelligence around this, they are now part of our entire portfoliobe it switching, routing, security, wireless, it is all part of this.  

Can you share about your partnering system and partner policy?

I think Juniper is selling through partners especially in India. 100% of our business happens through our partners.  We believe that as a vendor, while we continue to focuson ensuring that the technology innovation happens, but it is our partners and the ecosystem with whom we go to market and we ensure that the deployment -- because many a times many customers want an end-to-end ownership while I do the networking piece, obviously a customer has something else also.  So, that job is done by partners for us and we have this partner program called Juniper Partner Advantage.It is been in existence for many years now, and it is continuously improving.  I think 2021 Partner Program is already announced globally.  It is a very structured based program so that we take out any kind of subjectivity and the rules of engagement so that it becomes very easy for partners and us to work with each other. This year, I think Juniper has made significant investment in the partner program, over $100 million globally is invested into this year’s Juniper Partner Advantage Program.  It addresses all our partners be it the regular system integration partners, VARs, distributors, our service provider partners, cloud partners so on and so forth.  There are specializations of different nature, like no AIDE AI driven enterprise, data center, routing, security, cloud etc.  There is a tremendous focus this year on rewarding partners for the business they bring to us.  I mean, it has always been a joint kind of membership, but we have something called as a Deal Registration Program, and there is a huge focus this year from Juniper on deal registration, which basically incentivize partner and rewards them for new leads and new business that they bring to us, we close it jointly. Then there are some other kind of programs, for example, there are plus programs or acceleration programs like there is an Enterprise Plus Program, Service Provider Plus Program. So, these are for the partners who want to focus in a specific customer vertical. It needs a little bit of different kinds of yardstick.  So, all those things are also incorporated in these kind of plus programs, making it one single umbrella under which partner can engage with us. It starts from the entire partnership life cycles, right from recruitment to enablement to building funnel with each other, closing business, getting rewards, then not only that, even loyalty also.  So, it is a complete lifecycle when it comes to partnership.  So, I must say the program has evolved extremely very well.We have a good set of partners in India. I can say proudly, who have been working with us over these yearsfor mutual business growth, they have grown and we have also grown.