Analyst Mark Sue of RBC Capital Markets thinks Juniper can probably achieve its long-term revenue growth forecast. The company reported 23 percent revenue growth in 2010.

"The tailwind is still behind them," Sue said. One key variable will be how quickly Juniper can begin recognizing revenue from the QFabric and PTX products, he said. They are scheduled to start shipping in this year's third quarter and next year's first quarter, respectively. Expanding its addressable market with new types of products will also be critical, Sue said.

Johnson downplayed Juniper's vulnerability to product margin shortfalls like those that recently hit Cisco Systems because of the popularity of some lower-margin switches. Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers on Tuesday . Johnson said Juniper focuses on innovative switches with added value instead of ones that are more subject to pricing pressures.

Juniper's leadership also distanced itself from Cisco by emphasizing its focus on networking. In the past few years, Cisco has expanded its purview to include consumer electronics products and server systems. Despite Juniper's claims that its new JunOS Express chipset is one of the most powerful processors in the world, including server CPUs, the company has no current plans to sell computing or storage systems, according to Pradeep Sindhu, vice chairman, chief technical officer and founder. Juniper thinks it can do more for data centers with networking gear than with servers, because as data centers get bigger, the network plays a bigger role in performance, Sindhu said.

Going into other parts of the data center would also pose the danger of offending Juniper's partners, such as IBM, Dell and NetApp, which are helping to sell the company's networking gear, RBC's Sue said.