Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Juniper Networks - JNPR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ibexx who wrote (3083)	3/7/2002 11:24:03 PM
From: Ibexx	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3350

Juniper smiles in face of tough times By Steven Schwankert ComputerWorld Updated: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 4:51 pm Juniper Networks Inc. is putting on a brave face as it continues to focus on a market segment that will see little in the way of recovery in Asia-Pacific this year. In February, the company's share price took a hit when a report published by U.S.-based research firm Dell'Oro Group suggested Juniper was losing market share, including to main rival and market leader Cisco Systems Corp. It also took a hit courtesy of international data communication carrier Global Crossing Holdings Ltd., which filed for bankruptcy in late January and owed Juniper approximately US$3.6 million, according to Global Crossing's filing. That didn't stop some of Juniper's Asia-Pacific executives from announcing that the company would not change its focus of serving telecommunications and cable service providers, and that it was not tempted to move into the enterprise space, according to Greg Perry, Juniper's vice president, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Perry said the company's aim is to "provide a lot to a few customers," and added, "we don't try to tailor our products to any other market segment." As Juniper's engineers for growth in the region, he pointed to customers in China, including China Mobile Communications Corp. (China Mobile), CCTV.com Ltd., and China Telecommunications Corp. (China Telecom). "We don't see this market slowing down at all," Perry said. He referred several times to the "new public network," a Juniper phrase for the multipurpose use of an Internet Protocol (IP) network, which now carries voice and multimedia content along with data. Perry compared the IP network to a road that requires lanes for different types of traffic, from bicycles to taxis to busses, and claimed that Juniper routers do a better job of creating those "lanes" than those of their competitors. He stated that the company specifically moves more of its services to the software side of the network interface instead of the router itself so as not to decrease performance. China and Hong Kong Perry said that the restructuring of China Telecom had delayed purchasing and purchasing decisions due to the lack of clarity over management and final ownership of assets. "Dollarwise, China Mobile is our bigger customer right now," he said. He remained optimistic for Asia-Pacific. "This is the place to be in the world, especially this year and next year," he said, and added that Asia-Pacific has been Juniper's largest area of growth over the last two years. Juniper could make further inroads into Asia's wireless market with a new device unveiled in late February, developed in cooperation with Ericsson Inc. The companies rolled out a Gateway General Packet Radio Service Support Node (GGSN) for mobile wireless operators. A GGSN is a network element that helps operators migrate voicecentric mobile wireless infrastructures to multimedia-capable 3G networks that offer "e-commerce, gaming and live application sharing." Among the first to adopt GGSN are wireless operators Wind and Inmarsat. Rogers Telecommunications and China Mobile have 3G/GPRS core networks that are also likely customers for GGSN, Juniper says. The GGSN has been branded AXB 250 06 GGSN by Ericsson. Because it essentially is a reworked version of Juniper's M20, it runs the same Junos routing software. This means the AXB 250 06 has the same IP routing features as the Juniper router, including native support for IPv6, the new version of IP that features quality of service (QoS), addressing and mobile enhancements. --Jim Duffy of US Network World Fusion contributed to this report.