Gartner

Juniper’s a day late, a SoftWOC short

Juniper Networks announced a host of exciting new WAN features Monday. Unfortunately, that was almost two weeks too late for Gartner’s WAN Optimization Controller Magic Quadrant (published June 30), in which Juniper fell from “leader” to “niche player” since the report’s last update in 2007, based on the company’s (then) lack of a software-based WAN optimization controller and a number of other factors, including low market share.

Juniper didn’t have a comment when I originally contacted them about the WAN optimization Magic Quadrant, referring us to Gartner for comment. After the article came out last Tuesday, however, PR reps for Juniper called and asked for a correction to the story, because a post-report release update by Gartner stated Juniper had a softWOC coming in Q3 2009. Sure enough, Gartner forwarded us another copy of the report:

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Color my (IT) world…green

The Great Recession apparently hasn’t put too much of a damper on corporate green IT initiatives. The reason? Most likely because these efforts can dramatically cut costs (by reducing the number of servers in an organization’s network, for example), and environmentally-sensitive efforts can generate positive PR in a rising tide of negative economic news.

While spending on green IT projects has slowed, along with everything else, these efforts are still top of mind when it comes to project priorities, says market researcher Gartner, Inc., noting that 2009 will most likely be a ‘gap year’ for initiatives. This is a term familiar to Europeans that refers to a period of time taken by a student before attending university to reflect on life, get involved in volunteer services, and oh yeah, have a bit of fun.

In the corporate sense, however, it means keeping a low profile to avoid short-term cost cutting and hopefully survive to budget another day.

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