As Q110 draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting on what we’ve set out to achieve in the EMEA theater this year. Inevitably every first quarter contains a lot of planning and preparation – but to maintain momentum we also have to execute on those plans as the ink dries. Some wonderful accounts have been won, with new brands to us betting on Juniper to help them meet their business goals this year.
At the beginning of 2010 we implemented a re-structure of our sales and technical support teams. The new structure focuses on two sectors, service provider and enterprise, with five key geographic/sales “Areas” across EMEA – North, South, DACH, UK & Ireland, and Emerging - with each one led by an Area Sales VP. Each Area includes an Operating Area for SP and an Operating Area for enterprise and its own shared resource pool of local technical and channel resources, able to respond to enterprise and SP customers alike – increasingly the skills and expertise needed to support our high-performance networking customers cross the boundaries of market sector; an efficient, streamlined and cost-effective Data Center is the same whether you’re an operator or a business. There are also overlays for SP Sector, Enterprise Sector, Channel and Technical teams, with a dedicated VP for each who reports to me but who has close ties with the corporate function.
We have doubled in size our Inside Sales capacity to support this structure. We are also building in specialist direct touch sales and support teams to focus on key verticals – including financial services, public sector, data center, CDNs, optical – that fit into the Area/Theater matrix. I mention these developments to highlight the investment Juniper is making to position our sales organization for success as the market emerges out of the recent economic downturn.
I firmly believe customers also benefit from this approach – the leaders of the Operating Areas and the overlay specialist teams help to deliver real value for Juniper users. Focus on their business requirements and objectives will increase even further, coupled with the openness and flexibility of our portfolio. This helps to ensure that we deliver solutions that meet their needs, rather than shoe-horning them into more proprietary technology and fixed ideas.
Moving on from the overall go-to-market structure we’ve put in place for this year and beyond, I must also mention the Mobile World Congress as a great example of the execution of our plans in Q110. Although it already seems like a long time ago, we spent a cold, wet but very satisfying four days in Barcelona in mid-February – along with several thousands other people involved in the delivery of mobile networks and mobile-based services.
Juniper used this event to highlight the next milestone in its “The New Network Is Here” campaign. This is best summed up as “Say Hello to Everything Mobile” – enabling the network to support the user’s rapidly changing demands and expectations of mobile services, while helping to enable service providers to reap much better total cost of ownership and revenues.
As a MWC veteran of several years, I am pleased to report Juniper had the busiest event ever, with back-to-back customer, press and analyst meetings start to finish. We also hosted a great social event one evening at the unique Casa Batlló, a house designed and furnished by the famous architect Gaudi. Looking back, our presence in Barcelona further reinforced with partners, customers, media and analysts that Juniper is a major player in the mobile space.
Rami Rahim (RamiRahim)
on:
The Next Chapter in the Converged Supercore
