How do you see the networking market in Asia Pacific? How is it growing
and why?
It's surely moving northwards. And it should continue to grow stronger.
Asia Pacific is a very sizeable market due to a huge population in China and
India, and we were surprised as to how rapidly Asia Pac has invested in
broadband. The market will witness strong contributions on both the carrier and
enterprise side. Asia Pacific presents huge opportunities for expansion because
of the sheer size of the market.
How is the Asia Pacific market different from the US market?
The US market is witnessing a bit of transition, as a lot of consolidation
is taking place. Once this consolidation is completed, it will end up driving
the industry better. As for the Asia Pacific market, it is diverse and different
from that of the US, including on the politico-economic front.
Which verticals are more lucrative for Juniper in the Asia Pac market?
There is some variation across Asia Pac. For example, Hong Kong has done
pretty well on the financial services front. For China and India, massive
infrastructure development is taking place and the lucrative verticals there are
power and transportation. Also government, retail and financial services are big
verticals.
How are you focusing on the SMB market in India and Asia Pacific?
There is a lot of interest on our part to focus on the SMB market in Asia
Pacific, particularly in India and China. Although 77 of the Fortune 100
companies are Juniper's customers, that does not mean we ignore SMBs. On this
front, we are betting big on managed services. Carrier partnerships play an
important role here because they have established relationships with SMBs. So we
need to leverage that.
What kinds of products are SMBs buying? What are the key drivers in the
market?
Small and medium businesses usually operate with limited IT resources, and
security may not be high on their priority list, especially compared to large
enterprises which usually have dedicated IT personnel to manage enterprise
security.
SMEs need to understand that the impact of a network intrusion, or
introducing a virus or worm in their internal network, is very costly in
financial terms and also affects the company's productivity. Juniper has been
successful in addressing SME security needs with our integrated Firewall/VPN
appliances for their perimeter defense. By combining firewall, anti-virus,
URL-filtering, DOS and DDOS, and application level protection for common
e-commence apps such as e-mails, Web, ftp, and DNS, in an appliance, SMEs can
afford the best all-round defense solution even with a limited budget.
Which countries in Asia Pacific are big markets for networking products?
China, India and Japan and Australia are big markets. Some markets are not
that big but we still manage to drive growth.
What are the key elements of Juniper's market strategy for Asia Pacific?
We have an overall strategy to grow and make partners. Partners need support
and we will continue to invest in them. We also want to increase efficiency in
managed services. On the service provider front, we continue to leverage the
broadband boom.
In terms of Asia Pacific market share, how is Juniper placed vis-Ã -vis
its competitor?
We compete with a number of different local vendors in every country. Our
approach — and it is something we do around the world — is to be more
concerned with the customer and its requirements than with the competition. Our
experience is that if you solve the customer's problems, the competition more
or less takes care of itself.
Vimarsh Bajpai
vimarshb@cybermedia.co.in