Juniper Offering 60 Percent Discounts Under New Switch Program

The goal, said Juniper, is to help customers move their switching infrastructure from "legacy suppliers" -- a suggestion that Juniper doesn't plan to be ignored even with Cisco and HP-3Com stealing much of the networking product limelight this week.

The program will last through Sept. 30, and discounts through channel partners will be as high as 60 percent on select Juniper EX Switches. According to Juniper, it will also streamline the process of discounting the gear through Juniper VARs.

Lauren Flaherty, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Juniper, said the program is aimed at customers who are "dissatisfied with the legacy approach."

"The time is right for customers to stop solving network challenges by purchasing more and more costly and complex legacy networking equipment," Flaherty said in a statement.

Switches available through the program include Juniper's EX2200 line for branch offices and campus networks, the EX4200 line with Virtual Chassis technology, and the EX8200 line of data center-centric modular switches.

Juniper has a new battle for enterprise and data center networking on its hands now that the combined HP-3Com has emerged as a challenger brand to compete with both Cisco and Juniper.

Earlier this week, Juniper reported first quarter earnings slightly better than most Wall Street expectations. But it wasn't enough to give Juniper a market boost Wednesday, as the vendor's shares fell nearly 6 percent.

Several analysts suggested in various research notes Wednesday that the $912.6 million Juniper reported in revenue was higher than expected because of new accounting rules, without which revenue would have come in below the $906.1 million most had projected.