Saturday, December 8, 2007

How will Juniper's Hurricane-based Ethernet LAN switch affect Cisco's market?



The Ethernet LAN switching market is about to get very interesting if Juniper next month launches its highly anticipated enterprise networking switch based on a custom ASIC codenamed Hurricane.

Jim Duffy at Network World reports that Juniper is expected to make the announcement at a Jan. 29 event in New York City, where it will unveil its "vision, strategy and technology innovations" for the enterprise market.

Duffy quotes Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at The Yankee Group, as saying that the data center switches are "supposed to be '10G ready,' meaning he expects each slot in the modular form factors to support 100Gbps of bandwidth. Kerravala expects the 6-, 9- and 13-slot modular switches to eventually support line cards with 10 10Gbps Ethernet ports, but not at initial launch."

Juniper's entry into the Ethernet LAN switching market is bound to affect the market for Cisco. Even if you stick with Cisco, Juniper's entry into the market should help drive prices down. Isn't this what usually happens? Or will customers adopt a wait and see approach with a relatively unproven Juniper in the enterprise market?

Speaking of Juniper, remember back in August it launched an aggressive campaign to nab Cisco certified engineers by offering them free training to become Juniper-certified. The offer closes at the end of this month. Here's a recent update from Juniper:

"The Juniper Fast Track Program for Cisco Certified Professionals has really caught fire. As of the end of October, nearly 8,000 Cisco Certified professionals have signed up to become JUNOS certified. More than 1,000 people have actually completed certification."

The battle between Juniper and Cisco is definitely going to get interesting in 2008 ... Don't you agree?

IF YOU NEED TO PURCHASE HARDWARE FROM JUNIPER, CISCO PLEASE CONTACT ME BY PHONE +31650730710 OR BY MAIL DESIGNFORIT@LIVE.NL

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