In today’s networking market, there are a number of key trends that will drive the market forward, including SDN and security. During Juniper Networks’ fourth quarter fiscal 2012 earnings call, Juniper’s executive management articulated their plans to capitalize on SDN and security.
For the fourth quarter, Juniper reported revenue of $1.14 billion, up 2 percent on a year-over-year basis. For the full year, revenue was $4.36 billion, down 2 percent from 2011. Moving forward, Juniper provided first-quarter fiscal 2013 guidance for revenue in the range of $1.05 billion to $1.07 billion.
“Certainly 2012 was a challenging year given the global macroenvironment, and we have focused on controlling the things that are within our control and improving execution,” Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson said during his company’s earnings call on Thursday.
Among the things that Juniper can control is to focus on innovation. That’s where Juniper’s strategy around Software Defined Networking (SDN) comes into play. Johnson noted that there has been a lot of talk, and a lot of hype around SDN.
“We were relatively quiet on the topic in 2012, but in the background, we were hard at work on our strategy and plans,” Johnson said. “We recognize this is an inflection point in the industry, and we share the view that SDN will play a transformational role in networking.”
Juniper officially unveiled its SDN vision last week. It includes what Juniper refers to as a service chaining vision where multiple network services can be integrated into a software defined flow.
Security
In addition to SDN, Security will be a key focus for Juniper in 2013. Bob Muglia, Executive Vice President of Software Solutions Division at Juniper, commented during the earnings call that his company is still turning the corner on enterprise security sales.
“Over the past 6 months, we engaged in many strategic security conversations with enterprise CSOs,” Muglia said. “Mykonos, Juniper’s thought leadership intrusion deception technology, has garnered both significant interest, as well as new sales in the enterprise, and has provided us with a vehicle to discuss our overall security portfolio.”
Muglia added that at the upcoming RSA Conference in San Francisco at the end of February, Juniper will be talking a lot more about new security product offerings.
“As we’ve said many times, security is a growth market, and for Juniper, it’s a core area,” Muglia said. “Despite our recent challenges, we have a double-digit share of this market. We are committed to growing that share and we are putting the pieces in place to do just that.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
