By Doug Allen

Ask, and you shall receive. Juniper Networks is establishing two new extensive enablement resources purpose-built for its partner base. Even though Juniper has received high marks for its channel support, particularly in extending financial rewards to its partners, the company was still hearing repeated cries for more resources to help spur and close sales.

Juniper is answering the call with two online resources that should fill the gap and help drive channel partner sales, especially in situations where those partners are having a hard time closing the deal and reassuring the customer that Junipers portfolio is just as strong as the market leader’s, Cisco Systems.

First up is the Juniper Networks Learning Academy, an online learning center featuring a wide variety of sales and technical guides and information. This data, including online testing, is available free to all partners in the form of podcasts, videos and virtual demos. And taking the Academy theme to heart, partners can customize their training and education resources, choose from a number of narrow or broadly focused course curriculums, and gauge their personal progress by a simplified point system. The Learning Academy goes online in Q2.

On the marketing side, Juniper is leading with its Global Marketing Resource Center. Designed to help channel partners market Junipers portfolio more creatively while still emphasizing the partners own brand and value-added service offerings, the site offers customizable and co-branded marketing tools and resources. Maximizing the partners total return on investment while reducing the total sales cycle time is the ultimate objective. The Global Marketing Resource Center will be available in the second half of the year.

One of the most consistent aspects about Juniper Networks channel strategy is the companys determined simplicity when it comes to partner engagement and enablement, said Leslie Rosenberg, research manager, Network Life-Cycle Services, IDC. Juniper takes great effort to make it easier for partners to do business with them. When you combine a channel-friendly, go-to-market mentality with a solid value proposition around partner profitability and total cost of ownership for the end-user, its no wonder Junipers partner satisfaction continues to increase.