With about US$2.5 billion in sales and 5000 employees in 75 countries, Juniper celebrated its 10-year anniversary earlier this year.

Kriens has been with the company since a few months after it started in 1996.

Consumer and SME networking equipment may be a commodity, but Juniper still lays claim to having 25 of the top 25 global service providers on its books.

Even that market, however, is not sacred with the biggest of the big Cisco aggressively going after the carrier routing market with the much-hyped CRS-1.

To this, Kriens was coy about how it may affect Juniper's install base, only suggesting that Cisco's entrance more than validates the market as being alive and well.