Microsoft's Windows Chief to become new CEO of Juniper Networks

MICROSOFT'S online and Windows chief, Kevin Johnson, has jumped ship to Juniper Networks to become the vendor's new chief executive.

by Mitchell Bingemann

Mr Johnson will replace Scott Kriens as Juniper's CEO when he arrives in September, and take a seat on Juniper's board of directors. Mr Kriens will remain its chairman.

"We are very excited to welcome Kevin as our new CEO,” Mr Kriens said. “He is a world-class executive, and a person whose values align exactly with the culture upon which Juniper has been built.”

As the former president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, Mr Johnson oversaw 14,000 employees and was responsible for product development, marketing and strategy for the Windows and online services businesses.

The software giant announced Mr Johnson's departure yesterday but said no replacement would be sought. Instead, the software giant would split its platforms and services division into two groups that will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Mr Johnson said he was delighted to join Juniper and was looking forward to bringing his experiences to help the company scale and deliver value to its customers, partners, employees and shareholders.

Mr Kriens also announced Juniper had recorded strong growth in its second quarter 2008 financial results achieving a 32 per cent increase in sales.

“Growing our business 32 per cent overall is a higher growth rate than any sizable company in our industry can demonstrate. We're growing the top line, we're growing the bottom line even quicker and we're growing our market share,” he said.

Speaking to reporters in Asia-Pacific this morning, Mr Kriens said the company's focus on high performance network customers had saved it from the economic downturn affecting the technology sector.

“We've seen the economic effect on the technology sector impact others more than us. Part of that is due to our strategy to serve the high performance network customers,” he said.

“Those companies will protect the budgets for projects that Juniper is involved in and save their money elsewhere in less targeted areas.”