Mr. Hakkert felt that there were inaccuracies in LR 99 and the related Lippis Report podcast with Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group “Juniper Disappoints while Cisco Surprises and Delights”.

Below are Mr. Hakkert´s comments. When reading keep in mind the difference between opinion and fact.

Mr. Hakkert´s email to Nick Lippis dated Feb 14, 2008.

“There are at least three inaccuracies in the opening paragraph of your report alone.

First error: In short Juniper does not offer anything more compelling than what is already available from Cisco´s Catalyst and 4500E switches, Foundry, Extreme, ProCurve and Force 10.

Our position: We believe that having one OS (JUNOS), one architecture across routing and switching and one Open network through our open APIs, adherence to open standards and Partner Solution Development Platform are fundamentally unique Juniper differentiators. Cisco announced a new OS, a new architecture and a new hardware platform with the Nexus 7000.

Second Error: The announcements were a day apart and many in the industry thought that these products would be head to head competitors, like the companies themselves.

Our position: We made our intent known in December that we were planning to hold an Enterprise Event in NYC on 01/29/08. Cisco surrounded our event with a flurry of switching announcements, web casts and live events in the week leading up to and week of our event. We had no control over the Cisco marketing machine, but it did serve to provide Juniper with significant credibility. The Nexus 7000 is targeted at a very small number of extremely high-end customers; the EX-Series is targeted at the heart of the Ethernet Switching market. We never positioned the EX as a direct competitor to the Nexus 7000.

Third Error: Juniper didn´t take this opportunity to innovate and offer solutions to today´s pressing enterprise infrastructure problems.

Our position: Juniper offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of applications and services over a single network. We clearly outlined the performance, reliability and security differentiators offered by the EX as well as the Operational Simplicity delivered through JUNOS, to advance both the fundamentals and economics of networking. And we clearly articulated our routes to market with IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.”

Nick Lippis: I stand by Lippis Report 99 http://lippisreport.com/2008/02/11/lippis-report-issue-99-cisco-and-juniper-launch-new-switching-platforms-one-is-innovative-one-is-not/ and the Lippis Report podcast “Juniper Disappoints while Cisco Surprises and Delights” http://lippisreport.com/2008/02/04/juniper-disappoints-while-cisco-surprises-and-delights/