To the storied names of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, add Kevin Johnson and Pradeep Sindhu.
Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks (JNPR), told analysts on Thursday that he tries to model his partnership with Juniper Chief Technical Officer Sindhu once those successful government pairings at Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). Their relationship is thus central to Juniper that even major innovations like QFabric, the network design at the center of the company’s future data-center strategy, pop out of conferences between them. Johnson spoke at Juniper’s annual money Analyst Meeting in San Francisco.
Juniper’s management approach is much completely different from that of rival Cisco Systems (CSCO), that is constructed around a plethora of councils and boards centered on explicit areas of technology. Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers implemented the new management structure across the corporate in 2007, replacing what he referred to as a “command and control” organization. Though they ultimately report back to Chambers, the councils are to blame for finding probably profitable new markets and polishing off initiatives to enter them. Cisco has entered over thirty new adjacent markets within the past many years.
Granted, Juniper could be a abundant smaller company than is Cisco. It reported simply wanting US$4.1 billion in revenue for the year ended Dec. 31, compared with Cisco’s over $40 billion in revenue in its last fiscal year, ending in July 2010. and in contrast to Cisco, Juniper has centered solely on networking instead of branching into alternative areas like shopper electronics and computing systems. however the manner the corporate addresses major technology problems is notable for its intimacy.
Working with the workplace of the Chief Technical Officer, Sindhu identifies upcoming changes within the world of IT and conceptualizes ways in which to deal with them, Johnson said. Then, Johnson can get a decision from his assistant that Sindhu desires to satisfy with him.
“Pradeep can are available, and that we can sit in my workplace, [writing] on my whiteboard, and that i can have a lecture on some new disruption that is attainable,” Johnson said. “I can raise a thousand queries.” Then, he usually asks Sindhu to write down a white paper of 1 to 3 pages on the difficulty that they had simply mentioned. Johnson keeps a portfolio of those papers.
“Typically, we tend to keep them between the 2 of us” and continue talking concerning the concept for a minute, Johnson said. In time, they pass several of those concepts on to Juniper’s incubation lab, where the company’s prime inventors work on no over 5 proposals at a time, in groups of no over 5 individuals, he said. the most effective are passed on to Juniper’s business units, where they become a part of every division’s three-year product road map.
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