Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim recently boasted of the company’s strong networking sales to enterprise customers but thinks that momentum is only set to grow as those customers seek full-stack platforms that the vendor is ready to fill.

Speaking at the recent J.P. Morgan Hardware and Semis Management Access Forum, Rahim explained that his company's ability to get its networking foot in the door at an enterprise with either a wireless or wired solution leads to further monetization opportunities. He pegged this at two to three multiples of the original sale, with Juniper’s Mist artificial intelligence (AI) platform starting to show a revenue impact.

“For every dollar of wireless, there are actually $2 to $3 of wired switching opportunity for us to pursue,” Rahim said, adding, “that's not the ratio of our business right now. However, the wired switching component of the Mist-ified business is growing very rapidly and over time it will start to align more closely to that $1 of Wi-Fi to $2 to $3 of wired.”

Rahim noted during the vendor’s most recent earnings call that revenue from products utilizing Mist AI increased nearly 100% during the second quarter compared with the same quarter last year, with orders growing by 40% over the same time period. The executive also linked that upsell opportunity to its SD-WAN products.

That cross-selling opportunity between wireless and wired also bolsters Juniper Network’s targeting of full-stack sales into those enterprise environments.

“I believe that, over time, the number of CIOs and IT professionals that want to purchase full stack and deal with fewer vendors in the end-to-end path will only increase in many cases,” Rahim said. “We'll start with Wi-Fi and then move to wired. In some cases we're now seeing a start with wired and move to Wi-Fi.

"I mentioned on our earnings call we had a record number of full-stack deals," he said, "meaning these are customers and deals that have purchased a number of these components all at once, which is wonderful because that's when our differentiation truly shines. When you can control and have visibility and assure that end-to-end all the way from client to cloud, it's a great value proposition for customers.”

That value proposition is an important angle for Juniper to tackle.

Gartner earlier this year ranked Juniper in a leading position in the enterprise wired and wireless LAN infrastructure space. This was just ahead of established rivals like Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)/Aruba, Cisco, Huawei and Extreme Networks.

However, the analyst firm noted a caution on Juniper’s pricing model. “Gartner inquiry and subsequent pricing analysis indicates that Juniper’s bills of material are often quoted higher than customers expect and [when] compared with other major network vendors,” the firm wrote.

Rahim did not seem phased by that issue, explaining to the J.P. Morgan event crowd that enterprises are willing to pay a premium if they feel they are getting a premium return.

“IT teams recognize that the biggest spend is opex, and if you can help them optimize that they are willing to pay more for the equipment and for software services,” Rahim said. “And time and time again I think we've proven that.”

The executive explained that this is being borne out in Juniper’s deep integration of AI, which is allowing enterprise customers to free up employees to handle new revenue-generating opportunities.

“We're reducing trouble tickets at companies around the world by way over 90%,” Rahim said. “Think about what that means to an IT person [who] spends all of his or her time just keeping the proverbial lights on in networking. They are now free to do far more important things for their organizations, not to mention the fact that they become heroes of their organization.

"I actually think the solution capabilities and the differentiation allows us to alleviate some of the pressures on equipment and software pricing in the solution that we sell up front.”

The challenge for Juniper Networks in the near term will be to translate that value creation into covering up a slowdown in its communications service provider (CSP) and hyperscale business. The vendor recently reported that it will significantly draw down outstanding equipment orders to those customer segments from $2 billion when it entered 2023 to around $800 million as it exits the year.

That weakness contributed to Juniper reining in its full-year revenue expectations.

Juniper earlier this year raised its full-year revenue growth expectations, stating sales would come in 9% higher for 2023 compared with 2022. Rahim at that time claimed that growth would come despite expectations for a “more challenging macro environment.”

CFO Ken Miller more recently said this challenging environment will continue through the first half of next year, though he was not yet ready to make any forecasts on what to expect for 2024.