Jul 16 2009 9:56PM GMT

Juniper’s a day late, a SoftWOC short

William Peterson Profile: WPeterson

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:

Since Gartner confirmed that the first report was the one originally published and Juniper still hadn’t publicly announced their softWOC, we decided a correction wasn’t necessary (all the statements were accurate), and we’d report on the softWOC update the next week, when it was public and when we were reporting a bit more on Juniper and Cisco’s market position anyways.

Juniper’s standing in the quadrant itself remained unchanged with the updated report.

As the glam rock group Hanoi Rocks sang, Juniper’s just a day late and a dollar short in this case:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/8XNqHGSr-es" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

But even with the softWOC, the company still has some serious hills to climb if they want to join Cisco, Blue Coat, and Riverbed in the top tier of optimization vendors. For one, they need to get some customers. Right now, they’re hovering in the 4% range, while the top three players are in the mid-20% range when it comes to revenue market share.

In the meantime, Tim asked how often Gartner goes back and updates published reports. There is actually a Gartner corrections page that includes information on any changes or updates Gartner makes, so you can see for yourself. Judging by the number of corrections made just this year, it’s not an uncommon occurrence.

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