Juniper Networks continued its financial recovery during the second-quarter of 2020, despite COVID-19-related supply chain shortages and economic pressures affecting customer plans. While revenues were down 1% year over year, the company's revenues were up 9% sequentially.

CEO Rami Rahim expressed optimism as the company enters its third quarter. "We're entering Q3 with strong backlog and remain optimistic regarding our ability to navigate ongoing supply chain disruption," he said during the company's second-quarter earnings call.

Rahim explained that in many ways the pandemic has created an atmosphere in which high-end routing is in more demand than ever. "The strategic importance of the global network has never been clearer, and I believe the long-term outlook for the markets we serve remain positive," he said.

Rahim also lauded the company's first 400 Gb/s routing win. "We secured our first 400 Gb/s win during the June quarter with opportunities that span across each of the verticals and geographies we serve," he said.

While Rahim didn't name names, he said the WAN deployment was an encouraging sign of more opportunities to come.

"We continue to expect our 400 Gb/s revenue opportunities to begin in earnest during early 2021 and become a more material driver through the course of the year," the executive predicted.

According to CFO Ken Miller, while Juniper continued to see modest declines during the quarter, things were looking up for the vendor on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Juniper posted net revenues of $1.08 billion, down 1% year over year.

On a sequential basis, Miller said the company's financials are improving rapidly. "All verticals grew with service providers growing 16%, cloud growing 9%, and enterprise growing 1%," he said.

While quarter-to-quarter performance was generally positive, the company's year-over-year revenues were something of a mixed bag.

Juniper's cloud business continued to be a bright spot for the company. Cloud revenues have grown for five consecutive quarters, claimed Rahim.

The company's service provider and software businesses saw declines year over year, fueled by COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions and changes to the company's licensing structure.

"We continue to believe our service provider business is likely to see a mid-single-digit decline in 2020," Rahim said.

Meanwhile, Juniper's financial services business performed better than expected, helping to offset a decline in the company's U.S. federal business, which Rahim said was affected by COVID-19.

Mist continued to see strong growth during the quarter with orders up 170% year over year and new logos increasing by more than 100%. "Mist has now secured four Fortune 10 accounts," boasted Rahim, adding that shift to remote work has bolstered Mist's enterprise at home offering.

Rahim hinted that more of Juniper's enterprise offerings could find their way under the Mist umbrella. "Our strategy to Mistify additional elements of our switching, enterprise routing, and security portfolio though the year is helping us take share from competitors and should create incremental pull-through opportunities for our enterprise offering in future periods," he said.

Despite Mist's ongoing success, Juniper's enterprise business remains cloaked in a fog of uncertainty.

"The macro environment remains very uncertain and our longer term visibility remains limited, particularly with respect to the trajectory of our enterprise business," Rahim said.

Miller expressed optimism that Juniper would continue its rebound in Q3 despite market uncertainty.

"At the midpoint of our Q3 guidance, we expect to see sequential revenue and earnings growth. Confidence in our forecast is driven by strong backlog and strength within our service provider and cloud verticals," he said. "We believe these factors should help to offset continued uncertainty in parts of our enterprise market."