As Cisco Systems gears up for its April 2010 partner summit, The VAR Guy has noticed a rather interesting development: Rival Juniper Networks appears to have scheduled its J-Partner Summit for the exact same week. Was that a glaring error — or a subtle sign that Juniper isn’t afraid to face Cisco’s Partner Summit head-on? Here’s some speculation from The VAR Guy.
In recent weeks The VAR Guy noticed the following conference dates:
- Cisco Partner Summit (April 26-29, San Francisco)
- Juniper J-Partner Summit (April 26-28, Arizona), according to a company spokeswoman
- Interop (April 25-29, Las Vegas)
In previous years, Juniper typically held its J-Partner Summit in Las Vegas, right around Interop Las Vegas. The approach allowed many Juniper partners to attend two events for the price of one round-trip airfare. Smart.
But in 2010, Juniper appears ready to shake things up a bit. Channel Chief Frank Vitagliano sounded upbeat during a late December 2009 interview. Meanwhile, Juniper’s stock today (Jan. 4, 2010) is trading near a 52-week high as CEO Kevin Johnson continues to evangelize Juniper’s common software platform (JUNOS) for routing, switching and security.
Surely, Juniper will continue to bang the drum for JUNOS at its partner summit. That same week, you can bet Cisco Systems’ partner summit will promote the company’s unified computing system. The VAR Guy wonders: Will he be forced to choose sides or will there be time to attend both events? Hmmm…
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The question is who booked the event first? Cisco has shown disdain for Interop in recent years and has a long history of attempting to launch products and hold events at the same time as Juniper. However, why either company would book their event during the one enterprise networking show left is just poor. Sure it’s not the grand plugfest it once was, but why be so hostile toward it?
Anon: The VAR Guy suspects the Juniper-Cisco overlapping dates was purely a coincidence. Our resident blogger also thinks Cisco booked the date first.
And is Cisco really being hostile toward Interop? As of right now Cisco is listed among Interop exhibitors. CEO John Chambers has previously keynoted Interop. The VAR Guy will be watching Cisco’s potential Interop participation closely this year…
-TVG
HP had the Interop keynote last year and Cisco’s booth/presence has been getting progressively smaller for years. I bet Cisco had more people at Voicecon than Interop last year. The rumor last year was Cisco wasn’t even going to attend. You can bet the top Cisco brass will be in SF and not at Interop this year. The bottom line is that however lame Interop is perceived to have become, it’s the only show the enterprise network industry has left. It’s one thing to let it wither away, it’s another to try to kill it.
Anon: You’ve stirred up a pretty interesting conspiracy theory regarding Cisco allegedly trying to kill Interop. And yes, The VAR Guy enjoys conspiracy theories. Our resident blogger agrees: Cisco and other seem to be sending more folks to VoiceCon than Interop… The VAR Guy promises to check on this trend again when Interop rolls around in April.
-TVG
It gets better. Now HP says THEIR partner conference is in Vegas this same week. If Juniper bucked up and moved their conf to Vegas as well, Cisco would be the odd man out.
Anon: In case you missed it, The VAR Guy broke the HP-vs.-Cisco partner conference story. It’s here.
But wait… it gets eeeeven better: There is another networking-oriented company that is looking to do something in vegas that week. Stay tuned… If The VAR Guy gets confirmation he’ll post it.
I think this may be Junipers attempt to capitalize on Cisco’s recent shift to only allow their largest partners to attend the conference. I think this was in part, due to the economy.
In the past Cisco invites were handed out to the large partners, but also smaller partners with a strong Cisco base. My company had attended the last 8 years in a row and was not invited to the summit. With 4 million in Cisco sales, we are hardly a small Cisco shop. In any case, if we don’t get an invite this year, it will be a nice opportunity to see what Juniper has to offer in the Channel.
Dan: So, um… is your firm starting to partner up with Juniper? The VAR Guy is listening.
-TVG