Today, Juniper unveiled groundbreaking new software, silicon, systems and partnerships designed to propel the “new network” for enterprise and service provider customers. The new capabilities combine breakthrough technology with smart partnerships to help customers immediately reinvent the experience and economics of networking, and create a broad ecosystem of innovation.

Network World has a post on the news. Here is the twitter conversation.

First and foremost this is a direct war against Cisco. It’s a straight up attack where Juniper is showcasing their technology against Cisco (and Alcatel).

CEO Kevin Johnson, formally from Microsoft, is no softie (pun intended). Today, he and his team laid out an impressive vision and set of technology and product announcements. What impressed me was the notable (and ringing) endorsements from major industry figures and players. We saw the founder of the Internet Vint Cerf, the founder of Ethernet Bob Metcalf, Dell, and IBM, among other companies standing next to Juniper. This speaks volumes to me.

Cisco is the market leader and have been very quietly buying up everything that moves as part of their corporate strategy. Which I am not bullish on . Others have come to the same conclusion. I am curious to see how Cisco responds.

Outside of the competitive stance against Cisco this announcement had a bunch of "meat" to it.

Basically there are two big components to this announcement:

1) A complete company rebranding and positioning

2) significant new products, technology, and initiatives with a sharp focus on performance and software (Junos)

Juniper calls it the New Network – Here is the link to Juniper’s microsite with details on the new positioning and brand "New Network".

Here is my Angle:

Company Rebranding

I like it much better than the old Juniper. It’s fresher and modern. The company positioning is overhauled to focus on software as the core of their product innovation and overall company value proposition.

Corporate web site has been redesigned to be much cleaner with a modern look and feel. More interesting is the emphasis on social media and network features. On the front page of the Juniper web site the company sports a new modern look that provides links to their solutions and a direct call to action to participate and engage via social channels and various other collaborative forums.

I really like how they are handling their blogging strategy – mix of executives and experts. I’m looking forward to interacting with them on their new plans.

Product, Technology, and Initiatives:

There are four major points to the announcement:

1. Junos software as a "New Network" Operating System.
This is the Junos network operating system, the new Junos Space network application platform and new Junos Pulse integrated network client.

2. Junos silicon and system software for faster performance
It’s the new Junos One family of processors, including the Junos Trio chipset with 3D Scaling technology. Junos Trio will be delivered in new modular line cards and new 3.5-inch routers for Juniper MX Series.

3. Cloud Ready – it’s mainly Junos extended in the cloud – security and provisioning – It’s very datacenter focused which is not surprising. I’m digging into this further.

4. Open partnering ecosystem around Junos – kicked off with Dell and IBM and series of other companies and startups.

Key takeaways and benefits

Revolutionary 3D Scaling technology that helps networks scale dynamically to support more bandwidth, subscribers and services. The founder went into great detail on this. This should yield some big benefits to performance sensitive apps immediately (video and gaming).

New MX 3D systems that provide “universal edge” routing for business, residential and mobile services at massive scale on a single network. Juniper is touting better ROI, reduced TCO, and improved power efficiency (e.g. 10-to-1 versus competitors). This will be very attractive to service providers. Very compelling and brings a whole new meaning to "policy".

Open software approach – programmable Junos. This is an open cross-network software platform (based on Junos) that allows developers and Juniper customers to directly program multiple layers of their networks for rich user experiences. This is a direct threat to Cisco IOS.

New "Cloud-Ready Data Center" solutions and security products that enable enterprises to simplify network infrastructures. This is targeting an extended cloud model for datacenters with security at the core of the offering. Details are not fully explained but it’s around on demand provisioning (as best as I can tell at this point).

Bottom Line:

Industry analysts have been commenting recently that Juniper is too small to acquire growth and to big to be acquired. So this move today by Kevin and his team is an "all in" bet. The main target is Cisco. This will be a battle of competitive strategy.

This isn’t something Juniper just woke up and realized. It’s been a multi-year process centered around innovation and product excellence. Juniper is making the bet that the strategy of product leadership, openness, and software will ultimately win the day.

As the old saying goes – it’s all in the execution. I’m looking forward to this. It will be fun to watch.