Juniper's Sweet 16: Top Execs Driving The New Network

The New Juniper Order

Few other companies in Juniper's weight class are seeing strength with a management team that was largely assembled within the past three and a half years. Sure, Juniper's lost a few along the way, too: enterprise marketing mainstay Michael Banic went to HP Networking; Hayley Tabor, former senior vice president of U.S. enterprise sales, is now at Xirrus; Philip O'Reilly, tapped to run Americas enterprise sales, is now VP vertical markets at Brocade; Stephen Elop, former COO, went to Microsoft, and is now CEO at Nokia; and David Small, a veteran of Juniper's European channel, moved on to similar pastures at McAfee, just to name a few.

But the new lineup's done much to convince Juniper's partner community that Juniper means business. From CEO Kevin Johnson on down, here's a look at the team that's going to attempt to take Juniper to the next level.

Robyn Denholm

Juniper's new era is usually traced from Kevin Johnson's appointment to the CEO spot in 2008, but its current executive team began to take shape in August 2007, when the company hired Robyn Denholm as chief financial officer. Denholm came from Sun Microsystems, where she had been senior vice president, corporate strategic planning, and has been a key presence in Juniper's C-suite ever since.

Mark Bauhaus

In fall 2007, Mark Bauhaus became executive vice president and general manager for service layer technology, following Denholm out of Sun, where he had been senior vice president, service oriented architecture software.

David Yen

There was a slew of C-suite and executive vice president-level moves at Juniper in 2008, and David Yen, executive vice president, emerging technologies, was among the first. Yen was also a Sun Microsystems vet, and he joined Juniper in March 2008. These days, he is executive vice president and general manager of Juniper's Fabric and Switching Technologies Business Group, and an active presence on Juniper's corporate technology blog.

John Morris

Morris climbed aboard the Juniper train in July 2008, after a stint as president and CEO of Pay By Touch, a biometrics payments specialist, and before that he spent 23 years at IBM. A highly visible executive at Juniper and other industry events, Morris oversees Juniper's global sales, services and channel organizations, as well as its global field operations organization.

Luis Avila-Marco

Morris' appointment came back-to-back with that of Avila-Marco, who in July 2008 became senior vice president of strategy and corporate development. Avila-Marco joined Juniper from Cisco-owned Scientific Atlanta, and spearheads Juniper's corporate strategic planning and relationships.

Kevin Johnson

Kevin Johnson's appointment to Juniper's top job was confirmed in July 2008, although he didn't actually join the company until September. It marked the first changing of the guard in Juniper's top job in 12 years; former CEO Scott Kriens had been in the role since 1996, and remains Juniper's board chairman. Before Juniper, Johnson had been at Microsoft since 1992, and before leaving, led the software giant's Platform & Services division.

Mike Rose

Mike Rose came aboard Juniper in November 2008, where he remains as executive vice president of service, support and operations. At the time, it was a newly created position at Juniper, overseeing the company's Services and Manufacturing organizations. Rose came to Juniper from Royal Dutch Shell, where was a senior vice president and CIO, and before that, he had a 23-year career at HP.

Lauren Flaherty

In January 2009, Lauren Flaherty became Juniper's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, and according to Juniper VARs, she's largely credited with bolstering Juniper's marketing efforts behind its vision of "the New Network." Before Juniper, Flaherty was chief marketing officer of Nortel from 2006 to 2008, and was also a 26-year veteran of IBM.

Gerri Elliott

Gerri Elliott came to Juniper in June 2009, named executive vice president of strategic alliances. Like Johnson and several other top Juniper executives, Elliott was a Microsoft veteran, having previously been corporate vice president of Microsoft's worldwide public sector organization.

Stefan Dyckerhoff

Stefan Dyckerhoff was an original member of Juniper's founding engineering team and worked for the company from its 1996 launch until 2003. He left Cisco and returned to Juniper in early 2010, named executive vice president of Juniper's Infrastructure Product's Group. Dyckerhoff's return to Juniper coincided with a reshuffling of Juniper's corporate groups that saw two other veteran Juniper executive vice presidents receive new assignments. Kim Perdikou, who preceded Dyckerhoff as IPG head, took a new position as executive vice president, office of the CEO, and Manoj Leeanlivas, previously senior vice president and general manager of Juniper's Edge and Aggregation unit, became executive vice president of Juniper's newly created Junos Ready Software group.

Abner Germanow

Juniper's strategic hires haven't all been in its highest executive echelons. Some key acquisitions have included a spate of sales and marketing professionals and other industry mainstays like Abner Germanow, the former IDC analyst who became Juniper's director of enterprise marketing in February 2010.

Frank Vitagliano

OK, so channel legend Frank Vitagliano has been around for a while now, having jumped from IBM to Juniper in 2006. But in May 2010, Vitagliano stepped out from his position as worldwide channel chief and assumed a new role as senior vice president of partners, the Americas. It's a position that brought him "back to the field," giving him responsibility for all of Juniper's partner relationships in the Americas and a return to a position much closer to the street-level partner community.

Sean Dolan

Juniper's executive makeover extended overseas, as well; in late November 2010, the company named Sean Dolan its senior vice president for Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA). Dolan joined Juniper from Alcatel-Lucent, where he'd most recently been president of Asia Pacific.

Brad Brooks

A Microsoft veteran and one of Microsoft Vista's most ardent public supporters, Brad Brooks moved on to Juniper, where he's now vice president of worldwide enterprise marketing and solutions. Another key piece of Flaherty's marketing team, Brooks oversees overall marketing strategy for Juniper's enterprise segment, and has responsibility for go-to-market planning and roadmaps for Juniper's horizontal and vertical businesses.

Luanne Tierney

No sooner did longtime channel marketing pro Tierney put a bow on Cisco's latest Partner Velocity event than she packed up and left Cisco, joining Juniper as vice president, global partner marketing. Also reporting to Flaherty, Tierney's focus will be the Juniper Partner Program and how it's used by Juniper's global partners and global partner marketing organization.

Emilio Umeoka

One of the final missing pieces of Juniper's channel team was put in place earlier in January, with Emilio Umeoka's ascent to the position senior vice president, worldwide partners. Umeoka, who replaced Frank Vitagliano in the role, was most recently president of Microsoft Asia Pacific, and relocated to Juniper's headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., from Singapore.