Juniper CEO Sees SOA As IT Spending Driver

"We've got all of these applications out there, and what we really would like to do is tie them together. When you do that, you get online, real-time enterprises," Kriens said in a keynote address at Interop New York 2006, held by CMP Technology, the publisher of CRN.

Kriens cited research from The Yankee Group that projects SOA-related spending to hit $11 billion by 2010. For customers, SOA enables IT -- including infrastructure, applications and security -- to support the business agenda and processes, which can make it a strategic, competitive advantage, he said. Open standards also are a critical piece of the SOA puzzle and will enable customers to leverage investments they've already made, he added.

Kriens offered little detail on Juniper's SOA strategy and how it will manifest itself in the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor's product portfolio, saying he believes that a keynote address shouldn't be a platform for advertising one's own technology.

But he did highlight Juniper's intentions to form partnerships to reach spaces adjacent to the networking and security spaces it focuses on, particularly Juniper's partnership with Symantec, which was unveiled last week. That union is aimed at developing unified threat management (UTM) products, as well as intrusion prevention, network access control and endpoint compliance technology.

Separately, IBM Global Financing on Tuesday unveiled a five-year agreement to provide Juniper with a leasing and financing program, which Juniper plans to use to support small- and midsize-business and enterprise customers worldwide.