Juniper fund aims at growing partner ecosystem

Juniper Networks today said it has created a new $50 million venture capital fund to try to encourage companies to build products to help drive adoption of its Junos networking platform.

The IP networking market is picking up steam coming out of the downturn as businesses and service providers look to add bandwidth and move to more a modern IP/Ethernet infrastructure. Separately, the Dell ‘Oro group this week said the Ethernet switch market – led by Cisco, HP, Juniper and, in the carrier market, Alcatel-Lucent – grew more than 20% last quarter.

Juniper debuted its “new network” and Junos direction back in October. Among its key strategic directions was the need to break down the distinction between enterprise and carrier networks, both increasingly IP-based, as well as the need to bring data center economics to service provider networks. L

Last week at Mobile World Congress, Juniper delivered its packet core solution for mobile operator 4G networks, a crucial and hotly-contested new market.

The $50 million fund, announced today, will focus on companies building products in areas including security, mobility, video delivery, network and server virtualization and network automation, Juniper said. The fund will target early- and growth-stage venture backed companies, it said.

Juniper pointed to its long history of investing in small upstarts, including current investments in vendors including Ankeena Networks, Blade Network Technologies, Cyan Optics, FireEye and Packet Design.