Gen-i has become the fourth New Zealand firm to achieve elite status under the Juniper Networks partner programme.
Gen-i vendor manager Andrew Collins says Gen-i is Juniper’s largest New Zealand security partner by volume. “This enables us to close the loop on a complete end-to-end service for the customer.” Gen-i also has twice the number of Juniper-certified staff than the next most Juniper-certified partner locally, he says.
“There’s a big commitment by Telecom (which owns Gen-i) to Juniper in terms of their own network and there’s a customer choice element, where customers are picking Juniper and we’re plugging Juniper in what Gen-i does,” says Collins.
Principal services consultant at Gen-i, Dave Hunt, says the relationship between the two has grown steadily. “It got to the point where the level of business we were doing with Juniper meant a bigger partnership was becoming important.”
Juniper’s ANZ channels director Sander Dales says Gen-i’s focus has been on security and WAN acceleration on both sides of the Tasman. Elite partner status is based on investment, not volume, he says. “They’re gone through certification, invested in technical skills, demo resources and business planning.”