Infonetics Research analyst Jeff Wilson shares a review of Juniper’s recent Analyst Day event. Wilson emphasizes Juniper’s role as one of the top three players in network security.

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Juniper Analyst Day Review
May 29, 2014
Juniper’s event at the Aspiration Dome at their Sunnyvale HQ obviously covered much more than
security, but I’ll share my thoughts on the security piece here. They started off with a very strong
statement, that they’re in 3 businesses: routing, switching, and security. This message was displayed
over and over and was part of nearly every presentation. If there were any questions about their
commitment to security broadly in the wake of Elliot Management’s open letter, they should be answered
at this point: Juniper isn’t getting out of the security business. There are some pretty well-substantiated
rumors pointing at possible shedding of the Pulse client and/or their SSL VPN business, but those
operate fairly separately from their core security business at this point and from a revenue standpoint are
fairly small.
Interesting tidbits coming out of the day included a mention that there have been high-end SRX wins this
year because they have customers demanding 100G interfaces today. We’ve certainly seen fairly broad
demand (in the context of high-end security applications) for 40G interfaces this year, with several
vendors reporting displacements (or new sales) as a result of availability of 40G ports, but this is the first
confirmed time I’ve heard of a product win based largely on the availability of 100G ports. We’ve been
cautioning vendors for several years that 2014 will be the year that 40G and 100G are required, and it
looks like that’s bearing out.
Juniper said that they’re revamping management and reporting capabilities for security, which is clearly a
key area of focus as it’s rumored that in deals they’ve lost to rivals like Palo Alto and Check Point,
management has been a key sticking point—and as Check Point articulated, the scale and speed of
management in a world of billions of smart devices is a critical issue. They also previewed the release of
the second generation of their AppID function, a key piece of the next-gen firewall picture. When
discussing where they were investing in development for security, they basically said there were no
revolutionary changes coming, just more work on paths they’re already moving down: scaling the
products/management up, continuing down the virtual path, continuing to improve efficacy, and focusing
on mobile (device and infrastructure).
The afternoon was spent in product roundtables and 1:1 meetings. The most interesting thing by far that
came out of the roundtables was a discussion of SDN and NFV and its impact on security. AT&T
announced on April 23rd that Juniper would be part of its “User-Defined Cloud” offering, which uses NFV
technology to allow easy (or self) provisioning of network services. Juniper will deliver a virtualized SRX to
AT&T customers through the platform, and it’s a bold step overall in delivering security services; it’s
certainly, just the tip of the iceberg, and Juniper is at the center of the discussion, which is always a good
place to be. Juniper spoke about this deployment but also a longer-term vision where it’s not whole
appliances that are virtualized and delivered dynamically, but individual features (firewall, IPS, app
control, web security, etc.).

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JUNIPER ANALYST DAY REVIEW
This is a paid service intended for the recipient organization only; reproduction and sharing with third parties is prohibited.
Copyright © 2014 by Infonetics Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
Juniper is a well-established veteran in the enterprise and provider security space (holding the number 3
spot in network security based on our data), but they face significant challenges from the bottom
(aggressive, nimble, highly focused competition that has capitalized on their mistakes over the last few
years) and the top (a 500lb gorilla with the capital and market presence to make massive moves). They
have the ingredients and lineage to remain a top-3 player in our tracking. Their emphasis at the analyst
event on high-end customers, improving scale, management, and efficacy, and boldly moving toward a
world where hardware security appliances aren’t the norm from the core to the edge will help them stay
there as we head into the second half of this decade.
As always, I invite your comments.
Jeff Wilson
Principal Analyst, Security
+1 (408) 583.3337
jeff@infonetics.com