The channel has raised eyebrows that Juniper has become over distributed in the UK following its appointment of Westcon Group as its sixth distributor.

Westcon’s Noxs and Westcon Convergence arms will now carry Juniper’s full security and networking portfolio in the UK, heading off months of speculation. This follows Juniper’s appointment of VADition in September and of Computerlinks in May.

Barry Shakespeare, executive vice president of Westcon Group Europe, insisted Westcon would create a “net new market” for Juniper by targeting Avaya and Nortel resellers.

“One of the benefits we bring to Juniper is that we have a significant number of resellers that do not buy [Juniper products], and those that do, do not provide them as part of a solution,” he said.

Shakespeare added that Westcon would hire 10 employee to grow its Juniper business.

Dave Ellis, director of e-security at Computerlinks, said: “Looking at the size of the channel, you would have to say Juniper has too many distributors now, which could drive down margins. It will be interesting to see what it does following this announcement.”

Bruce Hockin, head of business strategy at Horizon equIP, agreed that six distributors was plenty.

But Barrie Desmond, business development manager at VADition, disagreed. “Juniper is edging more into Cisco’s back yard so it probably needs a wider reach into the low-touch but high-volume market. Westcon takes it a step closer to that market.”