No Compromise on Juniper’s ‘Partner First’ Strategy

Juniper Networks is one of the IT vendors, which give a lot of thrust on its channel engagement and partner enablement. Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director - Partner Sales, India & SAARC -Juniper Networks shares with VARINDIA the efforts the company is taking to strengthen its partner ecosystem in India -

In India, Juniper Networks operates through an indirect channel. The company gives a lot of thrust on the “Partner First” strategy and has an ecosystem of 15 elite partners, 15 select level partners and over 800 registered resellers across India and the SAARC region. It works with distributors like Redington Distribution, Ingram Micro and Transition Systems and some of its elite partners include Wipro, Inspira, Targus, VIS networks, to name a few. 

“Juniper’s business is dependent on partners. Our channel strategy is built on three key pillars: the ease of doing business through enhanced partner programs; a focus on next-generation high growth areas such as private, public and Telco cloud, data center transformation, security and software defined networks and ultimately profitability,” said Harshavardhan Kathaley, Director - Partner Sales, India & SAARC  - Juniper Networks.

The Essence of JPA Program...
Juniper Networks engages with its partners under the framework of Juniper Partner Advantage (JPA) program, which fairly complements its “Partner First” approach. JPA framework covers all aspects of partnering right from on-boarding- enablement, engagement-business acceleration, profitability and rewards for partners. 

“JPA program is going through various versions and we have recently rolled out JPAP 4.0 and have added few new accreditations as part of it. There is absolutely no compromise on our Partner First strategy”, Kathaley said.

Apart from JPA program, the company has a unique initiative called ‘Juniper Partner Advisory Council Meet’, which provides a platform to its elite partners and distributors worldwide to interact with the top leadership from various functions to review the partner programs and provide feedback for enhancements. This year the company is organizing its JPAC meet in in Bangkok in June. 

Kathaley also shared his thoughts on the increasing role of managed service providers (MSPs) in the channel business. He said that the MSSP model is also slowly evolving in the country as there is a great amount of reciprocation from customers and partners for SDN and Software Defined Secured Networks (SDSN) and Juniper Networks is committed to enable its partners on the complete architecture of SDSN. 

“The customer expectations and requirements are pushing channel partners to become MSPs, who would take larger role into the whole technology deployment. Many partners along with that have also taken a path of building the networks and the hardware and they are also playing a role in terms of building applications for their customers. Those partners who are able to do it have been very successful in their business”, Kathaley said.

Channel & Business Strategy in 2017...
Talking about the key thrust areas in terms of business expansion and channel engagement in 2017, Kathaley said that the whole focus would be on how the company would build high performance and scalable networks with a degree of automation. Juniper has ambitious plans of expansion of business and product portfolio in the coming months. “There is absolutely no compromise on the Partner First strategy. We will continue to focus on building partnerships and long-lasting relationships that will ensure growth for both us and our partners,” Kathaley concluded.

Priyanka Pugaokar
priyanka@varindia.com