It's not just the deep knowledge about the technical specs or functional attributes of IMS people are thirsting for. It's the more pragmatic, pre-planning domain knowledge they want.

We aren't here to throw any vendor under the bus or to sing their praises. We're not pointing fingers at anyone saying they didn't interpret the spec right. Nor do we try to push services down their necks. We are impartial and that has resonated well. We are able to speak through some of the positive and negative scenarios we have seen, which leads people to ask questions about solving the problems.

Juniper's participation underscores their culture of participating in proof-of-concept for emerging communications technologies.

As a way to build relationships, trust and credibility with customers, if you talk about problems and how to solve them as opposed to products and what they can do, people are a lot more attentive to that. The best thing you can hope to aspire to in test and measurement when you are in the trenches enabling other people to succeed, is to be a trusted advisor.

More often than not when we go into a customer environment, they aren't just asking what can our product do or for a quote, a price and a demo. They are asking for some degree of impartiality on how to solve their problems.

With their combined knowledge, it's just incredible . . . I'm learning something new every day,