Today, Juniper announced its plans to acquire 128 Technology for $450 M. The deal is expected to close in calendar 4Q20. 128 Technology executives have a strong technology heritage from Acme Packet (SBC company acquired by Oracle). 128 Technology’s unique session-smart networking enables enterprise customers and service providers to create a user experience-centric fabric for WAN connectivity.
We see a strong synergy with Juniper’s enterprise portfolio where combining 128 Technology’s software with Juniper SD-WAN, WAN Assurance and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (driven by Mist AI) gives customers a path to full AI-driven WAN operations. A trend that is even more important s branch location adjust to COVID-19 and remote work becomes even more important to the enterprise.
The market trends towards single-pane and single vendor in branch deployments continues. Our research has consistently shown a larger percentage of companies wanted to purchase from the same vendor and make the buying decision at the same time instead of stand-alone decisions or seeing portions of the decision as overlay networks. COVID-19 changed how many businesses operate, the WFH trend, and how enterprises reopen locations in the future is forever changed. Data, the network it relies on, and AI/ML automation are more critical than ever.
128 Technologies also feeds well into Juniper’s existing customers and existing channels. With the significant difference in Europe vs. North America and Large vs. Small, the channel is playing an increasingly important role in supporting business buying decisions. The move also increases Juniper’s exposure to subscription and software revenue, an area of focus for the company.
While 2020 is a down year for networking because of COVID-19, the future is bright. Our projections for campus switching, WLAN, and SD-WAN all indicate positive CAGRs through at least 2025, with the branch making up approximately 33% of the switching and WLAN markets.
