Juniper Networks admits that its Contrail SD-WAN go-to-market strategy is different from its competitors. But the company, which has announced SD-WAN victories with two service providers this year — Vodafone and GCI in Alaska — said that it expects to announce more service provider wins in the near future.

“There are a lot more in the plan that will come,” said Juniper CTO Bikash Koley, adding that the company has a lot more deals in its pipeline. Koley noted that the service provider channel is a longer sales process than selling directly to the enterprise. “Our product has high scalability and delivers the performance service providers have asked for so they can do managed services. We can deploy thousands of CPEs [customer premises equipment].”

Koley also said that Juniper wants to sell Contrail SD-WAN through carriers like Vodafone and GCI because those operators have very large enterprise customers. And this way Juniper doesn’t end up competing with service providers that are also Juniper customers. “We don’t want to be their competitor.”

Juniper likes to tout its universal CPE that is part of the Contrail SD-WAN because it can deliver multiple virtual network functions (VNFs).  According to Sally Bament, vice president of service provider marketing at Juniper, this means that customers can add other applications without having to install additional physical appliances. All of those tasks are orchestrated by Contrail, even third-party services. “Our approach is broader,” Bament said.

Bament added that the company believe its uCPE will drive more sales because not every SD-WAN provider can offer that. “We think this gives us longevity in the market.”