Juniper Networks has added cloud offerings and a range of new support, maintenance and professional partner services to its Partner Advantage program.
Partner Advantage, which launched last year, now boasts 12,000 partners. “Last year at the Global Partner Conference, Juniper Networks announced the most significant investment in our partner organization since the company launched into the channel,” said Emilio Umeoka, senior vice president of worldwide partners and alliances at Juniper Networks. “Throughout 2012, our partners have leveraged the program to enhance their value and drive profitability through new opportunities with their customers. Today’s expansion of our Partner Advantage program to include services and cloud will arm our partners with integrated, value-add programs and tools that capitalize on these massive market opportunities and can help drive their long-term success within the network.”
Partner Advantage Services was designed to enable Juniper partners to deliver incremental value to their customers through a wide range of services — from traditional maintenance and support services to more advanced and professional services. It will encompass two specific specializations — Partner Support Services and Partner Professional Services.
Juniper’s Partner Support Services will focus on support and maintenance services, making it easier for partners to complement and expand their existing support practices with Juniper offerings throughout the infrastructure lifecycle. Later this year, Juniper Networks plans to launch four new services troubleshooting workshops, including service provider routing, enterprise routing, enterprise switching and security, designed to help partners improve service delivery effectiveness.
Juniper’s Partner Professional Services will focus on validating partners’ professional services capabilities. By sharing Juniper’s professional services assessments, designs and implementation guides and promoting partner professional services capabilities to Juniper customers and its own sales team, Juniper Networks said that it will rely on its partners to deliver these services while helping generate more revenue per engagement and grow profit for partners.
Partner Advantage Cloud will help define and segment partners’ cloud capabilities, while enabling them to leverage Juniper’s technology partnerships, to create customized cloud-based solutions that meet their customers’ needs. These will include cloud-specific enablement, marketing, financing and rewards options. One such option is anticipated to be a Juniper Cloud Innovation Fund, which will allow partners to tap into marketing development funds to create Juniper-based cloud infrastructure and solutions.
All of the programs are scheduled to be rolled out throughout the year and fully operational by the end of 2013.