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GCN Home > 03/22/04 issue

When buying IT, agencies need choice

By Joab Jackson, GCN Staff

Juniper Networks Inc. in December tapped Dubhe Beinhorn to head its new federal unit.

By year’s end, the Sunnyvale, Calif., vendor’s federal vice president had announced her first big sale: a spot on the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion project. Juniper was one of four vendors initially tapped to support the high-profile project.

Beinhorn has more than 25 years of experience in the enterprise computing industry.

Before joining the Juniper sales team in 2001, she was general manager of the public-key infrastructure hardware and software division of SafeNet Inc. of Baltimore. She also has held sales and marketing positions at Harris Corp. and Xerox Corp.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Roanoke College.

GCN associate editor Joab Jackson interviewed Beinhorn at GCN’s offices in Washington.

GCN: Where were you when you found out Juniper won a spot on the Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion program?

BEINHORN: I learned in September that we were chosen for interoperability testing. That was the largest gate to get through. That was when we knew things were looking good.

I was pulling into my garage, talking on my cell phone. I lost the signal about halfway up the drive because I live on a hill in the woods. It was about 5 p.m. on Sept. 13.

We were invited to go to the interoperability test in New Jersey. At this competition there were about 55 equipment vendors. In the process, GIG-BE program managers pared them down through a series of technical gates.

They took us through a bake-off, putting us up against our competitor. Essentially, they tested for what you claimed your technology could do in your bid response, testing for things like IP Version 6 capability, Multiprotocol Label Switching and throughput.

The next step was to be called up for equipment evaluations.

They made it very clear that the testing in the bake-off was nothing compared to the interoperability testing. The vendors went to New Jersey. AT&T Corp. was conducting the test on behalf of Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego, which is managing the procurement for the Defense Department.