Juniper, one of the top IPSec VPN as well as SSL remote access vendors, hit a small bump financially this quarter.
Things weren't bad; it's just that the company took in 10% less from its security business - the former NetScreen - than it set as its goal. Revenue overall for the company was up from the previous quarter - from $306 million net to $375 million.
It also lost some of the people that came with the company's purchase of NetScreen, among them some of the people who worked on the custom chips used in the gear.
The company blamed these "short-term negative consequences" on several factors, including attempts to develop new sales channels, improve internal business systems and processes and hire new people.
The company says it fully expects to rebound over the next two quarters. This was the first full quarter of revenue since buying NetScreen.
While financial analysts and the company noted the security performance dip, analyst reports indicated they thought it was a mark of blending NetScreen into Juniper. NetScreen itself bought Neoteris about a year ago, so the compound digestion of one entity by another was bound to have some effect.
These same analysts say that the dips don't seem to be related to the products themselves. In fact, at least one said the company remains competitive with its major rivals Cisco and Check Point.
This leaves the company, then, in good shape to start delivering on the promise that came from its chairman and CEO Scott Kriens, "to turn Juniper the company into Juniper the IP network franchise." Grand talk that includes a vision for establishing standards that support secure IP networking across public networks.
