Juniper vice president of worldwide partner marketing, Matt Hurley.
Juniper Networks has overhauled its global partner strategy as it prepares to unleash a significant product pipeline in 2015.
The unveiling of the new program follows a challenging year for the company which saw layoffs and the departure of chief executive Shaygam Kheradpir.
Juniper vice-president of worldwide partner marketing, Matt Hurley, told ARN, the new strategy was a major overhaul of the program after spending a year listening to partners.
"We have put a lot of work into this and we are very excited," he said.
"It is probably one of the larger evolutions we have done."
The Partnering for Business Growth is Juniper’s partner strategy. It is built on three business pillars that are intended to drive growth for our partners.
It is delivered via the Juniper Partner Advantage (JPA) program.
Juniper senior director worldwide channels, David Bankemper, said the first pillar is about ease of doing business, enhancing partner programs for ease of use and increased specialization, accreditation, marketing and learning.
"We took a number of programs and put them underneath the same umbrella," he said. "Simplification is key."
The second pillar was about next-generation high growth areas.
Investing in next-generation high growth areas for revenue acceleration, including: Private, Public and Telco Cloud, Datacentre transformation, Security and Software Defined Networks.
Hurley said the company was going to focus energy on high growth areas such as Cloud offerings and SDN, "with an emphasis on services along with products and provide you with the resources that will help you accelerate revenue growth in these areas - performance rebates, market development funds, vertical market campaigns, and demand generation and sales tools to drive your business."
The third pillar is about profitability.
Hurley said the profitable partnering pillar would help reward partners for targeted investments and performance.
"We’re going to give you more time to earn that money (spanning multiple quarters vs just one) and we’re going to help you tap into a greater profit pool based on products, services, and software," he said.
"Our distribution partners can participate in the Distributor Performance Incentive program, a quarterly rebate to reward you for growing Juniper business in commercial markets.
"Elite and Select partners can participate in our Base Product Incentive Rebate and a new Commercial Accelerator Rebate. Additionally, we added a half year catch-up to the Quarterly Incentive Program Consistency Bonus for quarterly achievement.
"Elite Partners with Support Services Specialization may be eligible for our quarterly rebate when achieving performance metrics. We’ll also provide incentives for sales reps at our partners who sell products into new customers.
Other enhancements to the program include: Champion (partner technical experts) and Services programs to be tightly integrated within Juniper Partner Advantage, particularly with our Elite partner requirements.
Employing Juniper Ingenious Champions on staff will considered a proxy for technical accreditations.
There will be change to partner levels consolidation: 3 rather than 4: Elite, Select and Reseller
It will also be streamlining product authorisations to three (Routing, Switching, Security) from seven.
The new private and Telco Cloud accreditations will be open to Elite Partners
There will also be expanded planning for Marketing Development Funds to six months from three.
Changes to the incentive strategy will include enhanced product discount and incentive strategy — Elite 40->45 per cent; Select 35->40 per cent; Reseller stays the same.
Hurley said it was a time of change and that partners needed to embrace the change to have the advantage.
"Juniper innovates at the core we have new products that will be coming to fruition very shortly. So stay tuned," he said.
"Most partners that attended our events are very excited about the disruptive technology. There's a new feeling in the company right now and I think the excitement is all warranted."
