Yesterday, Juniper Networks made a series of announcements. The company is introducing technologies to flatten and secure the data center network and change the economic model. Juniper will offer multiple new homegrown and third-party applications built on top of Junos (a.k.a., the Junos Space initiative). Juniper is also changing its support model for enterprise customers and offering its support in conjunction with IBM and other partners.

These announcements are receiving positive, yet lukewarm, reviews. I read several articles saying the Juniper isn’t going far enough; that it is too secretive about its Stratus project and that it isn’t talking enough about storage.

Hmm. I understand these responses — Juniper has never been a company that goes out on a limb to discuss its roadmap or vision. The whole notion of the “new network” is also pretty vague. That said, I think the naysayers are overlooking one important fact: Juniper is making steady progress in new areas. Two years ago, Juniper’s enterprise presence was limited to high-end routers and security devices. Now, it has a full data center portfolio and is winning enterprise accounts. Industry insiders may not get this, but Wall Street certainly does.

Juniper faces a tough road ahead. Cisco owns the enterprise, is refreshing its product line, and is the absolute thought leadership master. HP now owns the 3Com high-end stuff and will try to leverage its enterprise server and storage base to hawk networking equipment. The battle to compete with Cisco or become the #2 enterprise networking vendor will be a long, hard struggle.

After years of technical geek-speak, Juniper now seems up to the task at hand. Yes, it still needs more vision, but in my view, the company continues to make steady progress — just look at its financial results.

Read more of Jon’s blog entries at Insecure About Security.

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