Networking equipment provider Juniper's third-quarter revenue was 13 percent lower than it was in the third quarter of last year. Still, its CEO Kevin Johnson said in a conference call that the economy was showing signs of recovery as the company's financial results in the quarter ending Sept. 30 were better than those in the three months prior.

"We are indeed in the early phases of economic recovery," Johnson said. "It appeared we had hit a bottom in the first half of 2009."

Juniper reported revenue of about $840 million in the third quarter of 2009 - a five-percent increase from the second quarter, when the company reported sales of about $786.4 million. Juniper's net GAAP income during the quarter was $83.8 million ($0.16 earnings per share), up from $14.8 million in the second quarter, or $0.03 in earnings per share (the figure reflected a non-recurring income tax charge of $52.1 million).

Johnson attributed quarterly growth to accelerated demand in both of its key sectors: service providers and enterprises. Service providers represent a substantially larger portion of Juniper's business than the enterprise market.

The company spent $33.8 million in capital during the third quarter - most of it on research and development. Johnson said Juniper would continue focusing on investment in R&D in the near future.

"We are delivering on our R&D roadmap and customers are embracing our offer of integrated routing, switching and security on a common software platform - Junos," Johnson said in a statement. "Even as our optimism grows, macroeconomic conditions remain uncertain and we will continue to balance sound financial management with our investments in innovation and customer satisfaction."

EMC reports a drop from last year
EMC - a company whose core business is storage but that owns a majority stake in virtualization technology leader VMware and other businesses - reported a five-percent revenue decline in the third quarter, when compared with the same period one year ago.

EMC's consolidated revenue (revenue from all of its businesses) in the quarter was $3.52 billion - still an eight-percent upswing from the previous quarter. More than half of the revenue was generated in the US. EMC-attributable net income during the third quarter was about $298 million ($0.14 EPS) - a drop from $393.4 million ($0.19 EPS) in the third quarter of last year.

VMware's contribution to EMC's third-quarter revenue was $489 million. VMware announced on Wednesday a total third-quarter revenue of $490 million.

Most of the revenue came from the company's Information Infrastructure business, which includes Information Storage, RSA Security, and Content Management and Archiving. The business contributed about $3.03 billion in sales.