'Strong Offense,' New Products Give Juniper Q1 Boost

And that proved true in the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based networking vendor's first quarter, during which Juniper made several strategic offensive moves to close the competition gap and retain its spot as a key contender in the networking realm.

"We are building a broad portfolio of offerings that enable customers to embrace the new network," Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson said Tuesday on Juniper's first quarter earnings call, adding that Juniper is "playing offense" in going after market opportunities.

Juniper posted first quarter revenue to $1.1 billion, a jump of 21 percent year over year, but a slide of 7 percent from the fourth quarter. Juniper's first quarter beat its projected $1.06 billion and fell in line with Wall Street expectations.

The company reported net income of $129.8 million for the quarter, compared with a profit of $163.1 million a year ago.

That new network, Johnson said, will focus heavily on the mobile Internet and cloud computing, two areas on which Juniper focused heavily during the first three months of the year, with the launch of a host of key products. Those products included its MobileNext mobile packet core, formerly known as Project Falcon, and the official launch of its QFabric next-generation data center architecture, once known as Project Stratus.

Meanwhile, Juniper's Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite, which the company unveiled in late 2010, is seeing traction in both the enterprise and service provider space, and the recent selection of Junos Pulse by Canadian service provider and carrier Telus.

The strong performance of new and recent product line additions outweighed some of the poor quarterly performance from Juniper product sets like the EX switching line and the SRX Series Services Gateways.

Those new product plays, plus a pair of strategic acquisitions last year that are now coming to fruition -- the Trapeze takeover, which gets Juniper into the wireless networking space; and the Altor acquisition, which fully integrates Juniper into data center security -- have Juniper primped and pumped with the momentum to compete with the likes of Cisco and HP in 2011.

Roughly two-thirds of Juniper's revenue comes through the service provider segment, which generated about $742 million, while its enterprise offerings saw revenue of roughly $359 million for the first quarter. Geographically, Juniper's sales grew across the board, seeing steady increases in North America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and Asia Pacific.

Quarter-over-quarter, Juniper added 315 employees across all departments, but Johnson said its heavy focus on partners and sales personnel will help Juniper execute on its vision. In the first quarter, Juniper added of a host of new top tier staffers to its executive ranks, including a few key players plucked from Cisco.

According to Johnson, the timing of the earthquake in Japan had a minimal impact on Juniper's first quarter financial results, but Juniper is "guarded" heading into the second quarter as Japan represents about 5 percent to 8 percent of junipers revenue where Juniper does strong enterprise business.

Juniper is also cautiously eyeing service provider consolidation, but Johnson said that Juniper likely won't suffer any near term impact in demand.

With those two market forces in mind, Juniper estimated second quarter revenue will range from $1.13 billion to $1.18 billion; a year-over-year increase of roughly 16 percent to 21 percent.

"We're clear on our strategy. We are focused on the domain of networking," Johnson said, later adding "execution is key."