Juniper sees success with Ethernet switches

A year since Juniper announced its first line of enterprise Ethernet switches the vendor says it has shipped over 500,000 Ethernet ports.

Bobby Guhasarkar, director of product marketing for Ethernet platforms business group, told CRN in an interview, the vendor has around 400 customers.

"A hundred of them are from the A/NZ region - a 30 percent compounded growth rate from an overall business perspective," he said.

Juniper's EX-series Ethernet Switches began shipping out in March 2008 and ran on the vendor's Junos operating system.

The switches were 100-Gbit ready, meaning each slot in the modular form factor supports bandwidth of up to 100 Gbps.

Guhasarkar told CRN the vendor plans to launch EX8216, a five terabit Ethernet switch, in May.

"It's the latest in Juniper's EX-series and will be 21 rack units high," he said.

He said Juniper currently has two types of resellers on its books; partners traditionally selling security and network infrastructure resellers - dealing with routers and switches.

"Rather than go from vendor A-B-C, partners are now able to sell security, switches and routers," said Guhasarkar.

"It allows them to sell security and network infrastructure without having to look at other vendors."

He told CRN, Juniper was also looking at recruiting Nortel partners to sell the bundle of products.

"We sent out letters to Nortel partners asking them to consider another vendor and we were open," said Guhasarkar.

"We had very good interaction. A few Nortel partners were hearing from their customers they were a little shaken about viability of vendor."

Nortel's channel partners would compliment Junipers security resellers, said Guhasarkar.