Juniper Bulks Up Service Provider Portfolio With WANDL Acquisition

Juniper will pay approximately $60 million in the deal, which is expected to close next month.

Piscataway, New Jersey-based WANDL creates software for advanced network planning, management, design and optimization. The company largely targets multilayer networks and the service provider segment, helping network operators better manage and gain greater visibility into their networks.

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"As our service provider customers continue to focus on finding ways to address the proliferation of mobile, video, cloud computing and other data-intensive services, they will benefit from WANDL's capabilities to design and manage networks more easily and cost efficiently, at any scale," said Daniel Hua, senior vice president and general manager, Routing Business Unit, Juniper, in a statement.

Juniper's acquisition of WANDL comes just over a month after the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based networking company tapped former Verizon CTO and CIO Shaygan Kheradpir as its new CEO, starting Jan. 1. Kheradpir will replace retiring Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson.

The appointment of Kheradpir, a 10-year year Verizon veteran who led the development of the carrier's $12 billion FiOS business, left some Juniper partners questioning whether Juniper plans to double down on the service provider segment, potentially at the cost of its enterprise or commercial business.

Chris Becerra, vice president of sales at Terrapin Systems, a San Jose, Calif.-based solution provider and Juniper partner, said he is curious to see what impact Juniper's WANDL buy will have on its enterprise business.

"I don't know of WANDL and their software, but I would be curious to see if Juniper plans to market this technology to the enterprise side of the business," Becerra said. "Many of our enterprise customers are setting their IT services up to mimic service providers capabilities and support."

Juniper did not respond to CRN's request for comment.

In Juniper's most recent quarterly earnings, its service provider business significantly outshone its enterprise segment, with service provider revenue rising 12 percent year-over-year to $788 million and Juniper's enterprise revenue sliding 4 percent year-over-year to $397.3 million.

Juniper said the WANDL team will continue to be headquartered in New Jersey, and it will work alongside Juniper's OpenLab center for software development.

PUBLISHED DEC. 17, 2013