Juniper layoffs: Networking vendor cuts 500 jobs – Andre Kindness, Forrester
Juniper Networks is laying off approximately 500 employees as part of a corporate restructuring effort -- 4% to 5% of the company's workforce.
Some industry insiders said the team responsible for Juniper's QFabric data center networking technology has been particularly targeted for staff reductions. The technology has received positive reviews, but uptake has been slow. Juniper recently added new components to QFabric to make it more affordable to midmarket enterprises.
The perception of slow uptake of QFabric is partially a consequence of Wall Street's impatience, according to Andre Kindness, senior analyst for Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc.
"Networking personnel are probably the most conservative group in infrastructure operations," he said.
"Juniper came out with a new product that is so innovative in the industry." Kindness said the typical sales cycle for a networking product is six months. However, with something as novel as QFabric, which allows enterprises to build a large, flat network that operates a single virtual switch, the sales cycle is stretching out to two years. For a public company, a sales cycle of that length causes Wall Street hand-wringing, he added. - Andre Kindness, Forrester - Sept. 2012