As an extension of its two-year old partnership with IBM (NYSE: IBM), Juniper Networks Inc., (Nasdaq: JNPR) today announced it has entered into an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with the company to increase its commitment and market presence across the globe.
Under the OEM arrangement, IBM will brand, label and sell select Juniper EX Series of Ethernet switches and MX Series of Ethernet services routers as part of its overall data centre networking solution portfolio.
IBM first became a global reseller of Juniper’s products in early 2007 and since then, they have also added service and support to the solutions as well.
Tim Lambie, vice-president of America’s international at Juniper, says over the years, both companies have jointly announced a data centre and cloud computing solution using Juniper’s equipment. The OEM agreement represents a natural extension of both companies’ commitment to working together and forming a strategic partnership.
“IBM selling, supporting and branding our products as their own represents another level of commitment by them,” Lambie said. “What this means to Juniper is an extension of our brand and solutions into them and their channels.”
With over 12,000 partners and growing worldwide, Lambie says this announcement will bring positive results to everyone within the channel community.
“Whenever an entity with market coverage and visibility makes a specific statement of direction and engages in joint development with another company, it brings increased brand awareness and coverage to the market,” he said. “It also demonstrates a level of increased importance of that particular solution to the market place.”
Today’s news will bring increased opportunities to channel partners because Lambie says going forward, the net number of partners may increase as a result of the OEM arrangement.
“I think going forward, the net number of partners will increase as IBM supplies our products, whether they are labeled as IBM’s or Juniper’s,” he added. “As the relationship moves forward, we’ll certainly find many other ways and applications to partner (with IBM) both inside and outside of the data centre.”
IBM will offer select MX and EX products that involve layer 2 and layer 3 switching, Lambie said. The products are targeted towards closet and data centres to help customers reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO), by minimizing power consumption and rack space.
As the OEM agreement matures, Lambie says Juniper will continue to grow its relationship with IBM by increasing the number of activities, joint marketing and people it has trained around the world.