How APAC partners helped Juniper Networks grow its enterprise business

Juniper senior director of partners sales APJ discusses partner program changes.

APAC partners drove 30 percent of its enterprise business in 2024, through Juniper Networks Partner Advantage (JPA) partner program.

Dean Cunningham, senior director of partner sales APJ highlighted the importance of its partner program in helping the company’s growth.

“The partners came to us with customers that they were engaging, that they went through the deal registration process,” he said.

Deal registration is a part of the JPA program where it rewards partners for identifying and developing new business opportunities when selling the company’s products.

“We rewarded partners, because they bought customers to us. Thirty percent of our enterprise business last year was driven by those partners to us, working with our sales teams and in some cases, being independent and basically doing it themselves,” he explained.

Cunningham said that number in APAC has grown by double digits over the years.

"If you look at the transition that Juniper has been going through over the last couple of years with the move towards enterprise, that's come a long way,” he said.

“Historically, Juniper had a large proportion of service provider customers off the back of that service provider business, we've managed to then continue to grow the enterprise business.

“The enterprise business now in APAC and ANZ is larger than the service provider business because of the engagement through those partners, and the evolution of the strategy,” Cunningham added.

Cunningham noted there was an initial fear about how AI tools and other emerging technologies would impact their business, but now partners are open to opportunities. He is even more encouraged that partners are looking to Australia and New Zealand to test their platforms.

“I talked about the maturity of the ANZ market and as a parochial Australian, sitting outside of Australia. It's always been a pleasure that you can go into Australia and New Zealand for ideas,” he said.

“A lot of people run their test beds in Australia and New Zealand, because firstly, they'll get an honest response. Secondly, people will engage, that's the interesting part of how we drive this, so the new customers are there, the partner programs evolving.”

Cunningham noted the reason they’re going to get growth is because of the channel partners.

“If we're going to get true growth, the partners and distributors will drive that, because they've got engagement in places that we don't.”

JPA changes in 2025

JPA released changes for its program in early 2025 to reward their partners based on outcomes.

Changes to partner program include giving partners the ability to obtain rewards through a points-based Seller Rewards Program integrated with the Champions community; offering personalised annual business plans; and new onboarding processes.

These tweaks are around “stackable rebates” or “stackable investments”, according to Cunningham.

“We're trying to drive growth, we are looking at bringing on new customers, we are looking at rewarding partners for their investment. If they're going and getting certified, we're rewarding them for that,” he said.

He noted that a lot of partner programs can be “overly complex” from partners program and experience unpredictability.

“Partners want to be profitable, so around being back to that consistent and predictability. They want to know that if they do action A, they get B,” Cunningham said.

Ultimately, Cunningham said they want to make sure they have their eyes and ears open for its partners.

“If we can move quickly, if we can make sure that we're supportive to the channel as much as we possibly can. The aspiration for us is we will continue to grow, and we've certainly got the technology and the messaging behind that to be able to do that,” he said.

“The partners are the way we're going to get that growth. So we'll continue down that path.”