JN0-251 action - Mist AI, Associate (JNCIA-MistAI) Updated: 2024

Juniper Networks is in the midst of its busiest year ever, and as the Juniper Americas Partner Conference kicked off in Phoenix Tuesday, Juniper's message to partners was a call to arms: invest with us, and we will provide you the air cover, marketing and partner resources you need to double down with Juniper solutions and grow.

"We are at the opportunity of a lifetime," said Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson, who told partners that the challenges of future networks -- and the dominant trends of cloud computing and mobility -- will not be satisfied by status quo solutions.

"The companies who are investing in innovation will be the big winners this decade," he said.

Attendance at this year's Americas Partner Conference, which returned to the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, is up significantly from last year's event, with about 390 partners attending onsite and 800 who registered for the virtual conference, according to Juniper.

Johnson was one in a parade of Juniper executives who took to the stage Tuesday, each offering some variation or message behind the idea that Juniper will dramatically ramp up its marketing and channel enablement resources for partners.

That ramp-up will come as it continues to push its "new network" agenda and drive market share gains behind major product launches like its QFabric data center fabric and strategic acquisitions like that of Trapeze Networks -- two big events in what's been, for Juniper, a year full of bold moves.

As networking and data center infrastructure shifts from what Johnson called a "vertical, closed" model to a "horizontal, open" one, Juniper will be focused on innovating in the service provider core, the service provider edge, the data center, the enterprise campus and branch and in security, he said. Partners will be equipped to become more focused on software safety and drive business behind Junos and Juniper's software platforms.

In addition, Johnson said, Juniper's R&D investment will be about $1 billion this year, and it will also look to continue to acquire -- perhaps not with the frequency it's displayed as of late, but where it makes sense, he said.

The biggest change in Juniper's overall strategy has been in marketing, executives said.

"We are all in," said Lauren Flaherty, Juniper's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, who said Juniper's market development fund spending increased 20 percent in the past year, and that 40 percent of all MDF spending is now allocated to marketing.

Whereas last year was about charting a course for stronger marketing, Flaherty explained, this year is about mobilization. Juniper's greater exposure -- from an increased media presence to a dramatic pick-up in targeted ad campaigns and a 24-to-26 percent increase in brand awareness across its major geographies -- is what turned the battle for networking dominance into a "three-horse race" with Cisco and HP, she said.

"Juniper moved to the shortlist in the last two years," she said. "[Customers] are looking for an alternative because the value being created by competitors is not sufficient."

Next: Juniper's Marketing And Channel Investment

Luanne Tierney, who left Cisco in January to become Juniper's new vice president, global partner marketing, told partners that Juniper will drive marketing plans that marry traditional marketing formats with social media. Juniper partners will have the ability to work with Juniper on targeted marketing campaigns and co-marketing efforts specific to their businesses, she said.

"We want to become your trusted marketing advisor," Tierney said.

Channel resources will also get a boost, said Emilio Umeoka, senior vice president, worldwide partners, who, like Tierney, was making his first onstage appearance at Juniper's main partner event.

Umeoka and Frank Vitagliano, senior vice president of partners, the Americas, will look to increase Juniper's focus on coverage, funding, enablement, marketing, partner rewards, communications and business-to-business interaction in direct response to the feedback provided by partners in each of those areas. Look for more channel partner tools later this year, they said, and also a tighter alignment between Juniper's channel managers and its marketing gurus.

Juniper solution providers of various sizes interviewed by CRN at the conference said that 2010 was the year Juniper turned the corner, and became a partner VARs wanted to gravitate to rather than a curious networking alternative with well-reviewed technology.

"It's quite apparent that Juniper is alive and well, and it's a refreshing change to see them out in people's faces," said Mike Johnson, director, network solutions at Forsythe Solutions Group, a Skokie, Ill.-based solution provider. "Before, Juniper seemed to gather around the network engineers -- the geeks in the room -- and market only to those guys. It's nice to see they're going after the CFOs, the marketing people, the pencil pushers, the people who aren't in IT. They know who the Juniper name is now."

Forsythe's Juniper business is expected to grow 23 percent year-over-year, Johnson said. While Juniper has been strong in service provider for some time, they've been, until recently, "quiet" in enterprise.

"Very few people in the C-level know Juniper has been around for as long as it has," he said. "They've been around longer than HP Networking, but ask most CFOs if they know HP has a networking product, and they'll say yes. Juniper is changing that."

NEXT: More Juniper Partners Weigh In

Helen Lesser, executive vice president at Nexum, a Chicago-based solution provider, said the moves she's seen from Juniper reflect careful attention to partner feedback. Nexum's had many more opportunities to co-market with the vendor in the past year than in previous years, she said.

"It really comes down to the communications piece: making sure that their messaging to us is the same as it is our to people, and enabling us to deliver that message," she said. "It's not an immediate turnaround, but they're listening to our feedback and they are turning that into actionable programs."

Lesser said Nexum's Juniper business is up 30 percent this year. Double digit growth in Juniper revenue has also been the story for Adaptive Communications, a Portsmouth, N.H.-based solution provider and winner of Juniper's Eastern Region Partner of the Year award this year.

Adaptive more than doubled its revenue with Juniper in the past year after doing similar numbers in 2009, said Steve Thorpe, Adaptive's president.

"The products that they've introduced seem to be resonating straight on with customers," he said. "After seeing Lauren's presentation on the marketing, I'm fired up. I think it's aggressive, on point, and going to resonate with the market very well. They looked to us for a lot of feedback last year, and they're taking it to heart."

Thorpe said Juniper provides an ideal data center solution to go into a Cisco account and take out Cisco infrastructure -- something Adaptive's been doing with increasing frequency.

"It makes all the sense in the world to the enterprise customer," he said. "We're seeing market share improvements, the investors taking notice and the stock staying strong, and it's a strong solution for us."

Jeff Zapchenk, account manager at Meridian, a Deerfield, Ill.-based solution provider, said Juniper has a more pronounced software influence than ever, but the opportunities with Junos and its various platforms add value for customers. The technology and messaging is finally in alignment for the vendor, he said.

"I've been selling Juniper since 2000," he said. "They've come a long way."

Flaherty reminded partners that challenging the incumbent players in networking and data center will be a marathon, not a sprint.

Her message?

"Don't blink."

Last week Juniper Networks, Inc. (JNPR) resolved their long-standing Foreign Corruption Practices Act (FCPA) enforcement action by settling with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) via a Cease and Desist Order (Order). The fine paid by JNPR was $4,000,000 in disgorgement, $1,245,018 prejudgment interest, and a civil penalty of $6,500,000, for a total payment of $11,745,018.

The conduct involved two of the company’s business units, Russia and China. In Russia, the conduct occurred from 2008 until 2013 and in China the conduct began in 2009 and continued until 2013 as well. The bribery schemes were different in each country but they provide significant points for every Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) and compliance practitioner to study and consider.

In Russia, from 2008 through 2013, employees of the company’s subsidiary, JNN Development Corp. (JNN) secretly agreed with third party channel partners to increase the discounts on sales made to customers. However rather than passing the discounts back to the customers, the channel partners diverted the additional discounts into an off-book fund held by the channel partners. These funds were referred to as “common funds” and were directed in part by JNN sales representatives.

These common funds were used in part to pay for customer trips, including trips for government officials, some of which were predominately leisure in nature and had little to no educational or business purpose. This travel was also to locations where there were no JNN facilities or industry conferences related to Juniper’s business. Perhaps most damningly, “In late 2009, Juniper learned of these off-book “common fund” accounts and improper use of additional discounts, both of which were prohibited under Juniper policies. Despite this, JNN’s off-book accounts, funded through diverted additional discounts, and improper travel practices continued through 2013.”

The trips paid for with these common funds included sightseeing tours, amusement parks, national park excursions and meals and entertainment for customers and their family members. JNN employees communicated the corrupt purposes of these off-book trips via email. In one instance, in an internal communication seeking approval for a five day international sightseeing trip, a JNN employee explained that the “purpose of the trip” was to meet with a “top [state-owned customer] manager to speed up Q2 bookings,” and as such this employee directly linked the trip and future bookings. In another instance, a JNN employee asked to take a state-owned customer on a seven-day leisure trip to the US, explaining his belief that if the trip was not approved, “Juniper would lose customer sales.”

The biggest problem for JNPR was its response to all of the above. When the corporate headquarters found out about these acts of bribery and corruption, they took some very problematic steps. The Order stated, “In late 2009, a then member of senior management initially learned that JNN employees in Russia had created off-book accounts that were funded in part by improperly obtaining incremental discounts, both violations of Juniper policies. Although Juniper instructed JNN employees to discontinue these practices, Juniper’s overall remedial efforts were ineffective, and JNN employees continued these practices through 2013.” Here it even seemed as if the company was not serious about stopping the FCPA violative conduct. The Order noted, “At times, these JNN employees used personal communication devices instead of corporate email, in one instance cautioning each other to “not write about additional discounts in exchange for something else via e-mail.””

In China, the bribery scheme was one well-known which we have previously seen in several FCPA enforcement actions and also the Chinese domestic corruption enforcement action involving GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK). From 2009 through 2013, employees incorrectly listed the true amount of entertainment involved on the trips. The amount charged was excessive and inconsistent with JNPR internal company policy. In addition to falsified expenses, local Chinese marketing employees also created false agendas for trips provided to end-user customer employees. These falsified trip agendas understated the true amount of entertainment involved on the trips.

The China business unit employees, then submitted these falsified and misleading trip agendas to JNPR’s Legal Department to obtain event approval. In contravention of the company’s review and approval policy, the Legal Department approved numerous trips without adequate review and after the event had taken place. There was nothing in the Order which spoke to the efficacy of the Legal Department review around the falsified expenses.

These bribery schemes are instructive for every compliance professional. The Russia example once again points to several FCPA enforcement actions involving distributors and other third parties creating slush funds through which bribes were paid or at the very least the monies spend could not be traced. The creation of these off-books accounts are an issue that every compliance professional needs to be cognizant.

It also points to another critical issue in compliance – follow the money. But it is more than simply following the money internally; in the case of JNPR, that would mean successfully auditing the various funds of the company’s subsidiaries. This enforcement action begs the question of what controls does your organization have in place to ascertain that discounts provided to customers actually are rebated to those customers? This is the where post contract-execution management comes into play. Compliance does not end when a contract is signed but compliance oversight must continue during the entire contract lifecycle.

The final area of instruction from the violative conduct was the failure of the Legal Department to ascertain the fraud perpetrated by the Chinese business unit. It is not surprising the corporate Legal Department approved the fraudulent invoices, given the difficulty audit organizations, such as at GSK, are unable to unmask similar frauds at their entities. The company was on notice that red flags had appeared in China so heightened scrutiny was appropriate, yet it failed.

In both the Russia and Chinese business units, red flags had appeared and the company was aware of problematic conduct. Yet, perhaps other than speaking sternly to those business units involved, apparently there was no other substantive action taken. The message is if you uncover such conduct, there must be greater actions than simply speaking sternly to those involved. Not only must you put controls in place to prevent the conduct you are aware of from continuing to occur; you must also have more robust detect controls.

The JNPR FCPA enforcement has several important features that inform best practices compliance programs. You should not only study it for the lessons to be garnered but also use it as a benchmark to see what is happening with the discounts being given to your company’s customers. Are your organization’s customers actually receiving discounts or rebates due them? Finally, while you should always speak sternly to your employees NOT to engage in bribery and corruption, you had also better enhance your internal controls to make sure they adhere to your stern statements.

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With the updated Model 3 “Highland” already available in parts of the world, an updated Model Y will follow.

A future update of the Model Y dubbed “Juniper” was reported by Reuters earlier this year.

And Motor Trend said on Friday that it believes a Model Y update is not too far off in 2024.

MT expects the following for the Model Y, which mirrors updates in the Model 3 Highland:

• New front and rear fascias
• Tweaked body panels
• Updated wheel designs
• New colors
• Improved build quality
• Reduced noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) / added acoustic glass
• Changes to the suspension geometry, suspension bushings, and rear subframe mount
• Reworked cabin

The Model Y update should prove to be more consequential than the Model 3 Highland update because the Model Y is now one of the hottest vehicles globally.

Earlier this year, the Model Y became the first EV to become the world’s best selling car, outselling the Toyota Corolla in the first quarter despite being almost double the price of the Corolla.

In the U.S., new data from Experian shows that, with the exception of the perennially bestselling Ford F-150, the Model Y was the bestselling vehicle through the first nine months of 2023.

And in the third quarter the Model Y retained the top spot in the California new vehicle market, dwarfing all other EVs and gas-powered cars. California is the biggest EV market in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world.

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Building Code: JH

Building Number: 041

Juniper Hall, built in 1962 as an all-women's residence hall, adjoins Manzanita Hall. Today, Juniper Hall houses 140 students, both men and women. When these two halls were built, all female residence halls on campus were named after trees, hence the names Manzanita and Juniper. The building also houses the Residential Life, Housing and Food Services offices.

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Juniper Hall, considered one of the most traditional buildings on campus, is located off Virginia Street and connects to Manzanita Hall, sharing a community lounge on the first floor. This building stands four stories and can house up to 78 residents with views of Manzanita Lake. Juniper is steps away from the Overlook Food Court that includes Absurd Bird, Baja Fresh, Paper Lantern, Peets Coffee and Wild Pie.