Juniper + Nortel = Cisco???

The networking industry, both global as well as more
particularly its Indian counterpart, mirrors the dynamics of the cricketing
world. While Australia has been dominating cricket for years, from time to time,
one or another team comes up with the pretension of challenging the Aussie
throne. The challenge of these aspirants to become no. 1 often proves to be a
chimera; actually, a fight to gain the no. 2 spot, is more close to reality.
Likewise, Cisco has been the undisputed king of the Indian networking market for
years now. Though, from time to time a host of vendors like D-Link, 3Com and
Nortel have attempted to emerge as serious Cisco competitors, they have more or
less always scrapped to bag the no. 2 spot.

The Deal

The latest entrant to throw its hat into the "no. 2 bragging
rights" ring is Juniper Networks, who for years have been assiduously
trying to build its market share in India. But can it challenge Cisco for the
no. 1 spot? Even the Juniper big bosses are not sure; in fact, they too admit
frankly that it is not easy to displace a vendor with over 80% market share in
most networking components. Nagendra Venkaswamy, country manager, Juniper
Networks, says that Juniper's strategy to grow in India is totally independent
of Cisco's stratagem or market share. "We plan our strategies in our own
way, what we feel would be best for Juniper in the long run, and not as reaction
to what Cisco is doing," he adds.

One interesting aspect of this strategy in recent months has
been an informal alliance formed with Nortel Networks. Though Venkaswamy and the
other Juniper management are at pains to explain that the alliance is solely
meant to offer clients an end-to-end solution, industry observers are certain
that the strategy is aimed at ultimately taking on the might of Cisco. One of
the chief architects of this strategy has been Sanjay Jotshi, currently in
charge of Juniper's enterprise sales and channel sales, and the man who joined
about a year back from Nortel. Obviously, Jotshi has been looking at marrying
his past and present employers to take on their "common enemy no. 1"
on the lucrative turf of the Indian networking market.

Raising to the Challenge

In cricketing parlance, the Juniper-Nortel alliance resembles two entities
joining hands with their different core competencies to take on their competitor
who provide offerings that encompasses both their portfolios. While Juniper has
been a strong player in the routers segment, Nortel's traditional strength has
been in switching. And one reason for Cisco's complete market domination has
been its plethora of offerings in both-a fact that influences many clients who
prefer a single vendor for all their solutions. Imagine, India, Pakistan and Sri
Lanka (maybe now Bangladesh too) joining hands to form a common sub-continental
team to take on Australia; it would really be interesting to contemplate the
result of such a competition.

In the routers space, Juniper has been sporadically competing
against Cisco, often significantly eating into its share in certain quarters.
Telecom was the key with accounts like Bharti, Reliance and Hutch being notched
up. Acquisitions like Peribit Networks and NetScreen allowed Juniper to make
their presence felt somewhat in the enterprise space in form of performance and
WAN acceleration products. This move is another indication of the trend toward
combining different acceleration solutions in fewer devices, leading to a rapid
consolidation in the market for application acceleration technologies. Because
the market for routing (WAN) and switching (LAN) network devices is converging,
Juniper needed to add a switch product to its portfolio to become a credible
Cisco competitor. And this is exactly where Venkaswamy agrees that Nortel comes
into the picture.

Nortel in recent times has seen the culmination of a few big
deals, especially switching at data centers. Recovering from its earlier
negative growth, the company has been making a strong foothold again in the
networking market. Particularly, in the BPO space it bagged clients like Bharti,
Taj Reservation Network, American Express, iSeva, BNK Capital Markets Group,
HTMT, Hiranandani, and OfficeTiger amongst others. With defense revamping
networks that have been four to five years old there is a huge scope opening up
for the company. With its dedicated SMB portfolio and enterprise switching
products Nortel has filled the gaps to meet the market requirement and is armed
to take on competition. And the alliance with Juniper could particularly help at
this juncture.

Testing New Water

The efficacy of this alliance is being tested on the lucrative SWAN projects
in various states under the National e-Governance plan. With many states going
for extensive greenfield SWAN deployments and a few in the process of revamping
their existing WANS, state IT secretaries are being assiduously wooed by the
networking vendors. Till now, Cisco has been the undisputed numero uno,
virtually unchallenged, the L1s in the SWAN space. However, the Juniper-Nortel
alliance tasted its first significant success in the Himachal Pradesh SWAN
project, where it bagged the account on a joint marketing pitch against Cisco.
Venkaswamy says that in few other states too, the alliance is currently in the
closing stages of negotiations and hopes to repeat their Himachal success.

What Lies Ahead

Harping back to the cricket simile, critics might argue the merits of a
common sub-continent team against Australia. Vested individual interests (in
some cases genuine) and individual concerns might mar the fortunes of such an
alliance. Here too, there is a possibility that individual business interests of
Juniper and Nortel might sabotage the interests of such an alliance. Venkaswamy
doesn't feel so, as the agreement is only a deal-based joint marketing and
support program for end-to-end solutions, with each vendor sticking to their own
competencies. Maybe a formal global alliance or merger can be in the offing?
Venkaswamy and the Indian management however, cannot admit to any such
development.

In fact, the affable Indian country manager argues that Juniper
is also making its mark in the Indian market on its own even against Cisco
without any alliance with any other vendor. The man who joined Juniper about two
years back from Datacraft, a strong Cisco partner, and therefore knows Cisco's
business dynamics pretty well, is confident that in both enterprise and telecom
service provider space, Juniper is emerging as a serious player in the Indian
market. It recently bagged the contract to deploy the first NGN (next-generation
network) in a telecom service provider in the country. Though he is unwilling to
name the telco, industry watchers mention that it has been done at Hutch. And
with more FDI now coming into the telecom space (Hutch, Idea et al) this too,
looks like a lucrative space for Juniper in the future.

Rajneesh De

rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in