Juniper Seeks to Rally Partners

It’s now or never for Juniper Networks. In a savvy move, the networking company scheduled its partner event in Las Vegas — the same week as the big Interop show. That’s a smart move, but Juniper will also face its share of challenges during the week.

First, the good news. Juniper’s partner event should be strongly attended since many networking consultants are in Vegas anyway for Interop. The VAR Guy plans to track down Juniper executives on Monday, May 21, so be sure to check back for timely perspectives.

Juniper CEO Scott Kriens will have a chance to set the tone for the week. Instead of playing second fiddle to Cisco CEO John Chambers–who’s will speak at Interop on May 22–Kriens will outline his strategy on May 21 to the Juniper conference attendees.

Unified communications will certainly dominate keynotes from Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and Nortel over at Interop. For the most part, Juniper will avoid that noise and will instead focus on enterprise routing, security and application performance solutions during its partner event as well as during Interop.

Juniper’s big partner push comes at a critical time. Citrigroup on May 18 downgraded the company’s stock amid concerns about slowing business in Japan.