Juniper: Chris Jones Succeeds Frank Vitagliano

Juniper (NYSE:JNPR) has named Chris Jones to succeed Frank Vitagliano as its VP for Americas Partner Sales. Vitagliano recently exited Juniper to join Dell (NASDAQ:DELL). Jones, a Juniper veteran, previously held VP-level and director-level positions at Proxim and Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO). So what are Jones’ top priorities? Here are some clues.

Jones shifted into the channel partner position effective April 1, according to a Juniper blog entry. He led Juniper’s Partner Advisory Council (JPAC) meeting last week in San Diego. Juniper is touting Jones’ expertise in the enterprise market, and previous channel experience at Cisco WebEx and Proxim.

In a prepared statement, Emilio Umeoka, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Partners, said Jones’ priorities would include a commitment to cloud-enabling partners.

Juniper has been mostly quiet following the company’s global partner summit in January 2013, at which time the company announced its Software-Defined Networking (SDN) strategy.

Dozens of companies are now promoting SDN initatives. Jones and the Juniper channel team will need to balance long-term SDN vision with near-term partner sales opportunities.