Cantor Fitzgerald also doesn't dispute that Juniper may be exploring a potential suitor; but it "strongly disagrees" that EMC is one.

Like Oppenheimer, Cantor analyst Paul Mansky cites a disconnect in EMC's and Juniper's target customers; "cheaper" and better-aligned alternatives in Brocade and Arista Networks; a two-year-old OEM arrangement between EMC and Juniper that "hasn't born fruit" and seen "immaterial levels of traction"; and product execution issues at Juniper.

"To the extent EMC is looking at entering the switching market, it would be centered upon next-generation architectures - flat (single tier) networks, NOT competing head-head in a well-established legacy 3-tier network dominated by Cisco," Mansky states. "Juniper's Q-Fabric offering, its next-generation 'flat network' architecture has ~200 customers after almost two years in the market - and was just the focus of the down-sizing action taken at Juniper; Brocade on the other hand has over 700 customers in the same amount of time."

Citigroup doesn't believe Juniper is shopping itself around at all, according to this Barron's :

"Simply put, we don't think the set-up is ripe for a company-driven sale: JNPR has major product cycles just kicking in (T4000 core upgrade, PTX converged transport solution, QFabric data center solution), still-healthy margins (down significantly from 2010 levels, but a still-healthy 15% operating margin last quarter), solid cash flows ($212mln CFO, $124mln FCF last quarter), and healthy balance sheet ($3.4bln cash & ST investment, $2.4bln net cash). We don't see JNPR as a company in distress or facing the existential challenges/risks that would typically motivate a sale."