Some information you anticipate, some you don’t. I’ll be trustworthy — I didn’t anticipate this and would have wager in opposition to the thought if somebody informed me about it yesterday. HPE is buying Juniper Networks.

I’ve had a pair days to course of it, and through that point, I had an epiphany. Considering again to early 2023 at Aruba’s Environment convention, it hit me why HPE is making this transfer, which is a really totally different method from Aruba’s previous. Aruba’s founders — Keerti Melkote and Pankaj Manglik — and the CEO credited with their rise, Dominic Orr, grew the enterprise by difficult the fats entry level (AP) method within the early 2000s with a singular imaginative and prescient on managing a wi-fi community. The brand new executives at Aruba (HPE) from Silver Peak, HPE, and Axis see acquisitions as the way in which to develop the networking enterprise. At first look, shopping for Juniper may seem to be a poor method given its many overlaps (i.e., each firms have switching and wi-fi product traces), however there may be extra to this than you suppose. A lot of Juniper’s merchandise and IP would take HPE too lengthy to create organically, and it could be too messy if the corporate tried to purchase totally different items, like Excessive Networks did with Enterasys, Motorola, Aerohive, Avaya, and Brocade. HPE wants an enormous fish if it will hit its targets shortly.

Here’s what HPE is getting out of a Juniper acquisition:

• Synthetic intelligence. Juniper’s AI product, referred to as Marvis (a part of the Mist acquisition in 2019), is by far essentially the most superior AI answer within the networking market. That’s not a profound assertion; no vendor has something near it. The short historical past: Juniper’s acquisition of Mist introduced the corporate a cloud-based Wi-Fi answer with a number one AI functionality, Marvis. Juniper shortly began integrating its switching and routing portfolio into Marvis. Walmart, Amazon, and others took discover. Quick-forward to in the present day: This offers HPE Aruba a two-year lead in opposition to its opponents by bringing Juniper into the fold.
• A critical information heart switching answer. HPE has had many begins, but it has at all times fizzled in the case of information heart options that ranged from 3Com switches to the current Aruba CX switches. None of them stood as much as what Arista, Cisco, and Juniper supplied. Now, Aruba has Juniper’s information heart switching line and strong OS, Junos.
• Actual cloud-based administration and monitoring. I believe we are able to all agree that conventional networking distributors don’t excel at constructing intuitive trendy software program. Particularly, none of them might create good, easy cloud-based administration and monitoring options for switches and APs. That is the important thing purpose why Cisco purchased Meraki, Juniper purchased Mist, and Excessive Networks purchased Aerohive. For HPE Aruba, shifting Central into the cloud wasn’t turning out to be straightforward. Now, HPE Aruba may have Mist.
• A foothold within the service supplier market. Aside from Cisco, Juniper is the one enterprise networking vendor that has a powerful presence within the cloud and telecom market. Juniper brings in about $2 billion in annual income from the SP market, which is roughly 40% of the corporate’s 2023 income. HPE has been attempting to get a networking foothold into the 5G market so it may possibly deliver in additional Silver Peak gross sales, which additionally capitalizes on the 2023 personal 5G Athonet acquisition.
• A robust safety story. By this acquisition, HPE goals to additional bolster its rising safety portfolio by gaining Juniper’s enterprise firewall (which carried out nicely in our most up-to-date evaluations) and its cloud sandbox, full with a reliable menace intelligence group. It isn’t clear, nonetheless, whether or not Juniper’s “Linked Safety” technique, the place switches take part in a safety mesh, will discover a perpetually dwelling in a conglomerate like HPE. HPE launched an identical characteristic to its CX lineup, which brings utility visibility and coverage enforcement on the change. However this current enhancement sought to place its CX switches as an enterprise firewall various, and it could be too quickly in its rollout to find out its advantage.

What does this imply for the competitors?

• Arista Networks. Whereas many may see this acquisition as hurting Arista, I truly see it as a win. Arista would be the solely firm to supply a single community working system with a transparent and succinct networking focus. The opposite distributors will likely be spending numerous assets attempting to scrub up piles of acquired merchandise. Juniper resellers, which have a powerful set of technical expertise and consumer lists, will in all probability shift to Arista Networks.
• Whereas Cisco lacks AI capabilities, the corporate has made an about-face and has a couple of yr’s head begin in cleansing up and slimming down its large portfolio; Aruba has but to begin. However Cisco received’t be the one vendor with a head begin; Cisco should cope with the second- and third-place distributors coming collectively and making a comparable switching and routing portfolio that addresses each the enterprise and SP markets.

What does this imply for you?

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. As with all acquisition, the journey forward will likely be rife with obstacles for Juniper and HPE/Aruba prospects alike. As this high-level merger unfolds, the corporate will search to:

• Create a singular technique that doesn’t simply say “I’m a special sort of Cisco.” Check out my weblog on the technique axis in a Forrester Wave™ analysis. This could give you some issues to consider and inquiries to ask. Don’t settle for what you learn over the subsequent week or vendor advertising slides, press experiences, or what different blogs say. This can take a while to work out. Distributors sometimes promise greater and extra choices by way of a traditional “higher collectively” story. However that isn’t a imaginative and prescient and technique. Extra choices result in extra complexity, and it takes a very long time to get there.
• Rationalize/optimize the portfolio, the merchandise, and the options. Whereas HPE will attempt to reassure you that nothing will change, it doesn’t make sense to maintain the whole lot, particularly the a number of AP product traces (Immediate On, Mist, and Aruba APs), all of the routing and switching working techniques (Juno, AOS-CX, and ArubaOS), and each administration techniques (Central and Mist). Although not instantly, merchandise might want to go, and the {hardware} that stays will have to be modified to accommodate cloud-based administration, monitoring, and AI. This occurred at Cisco with its routing, switching, and wi-fi product traces after the corporate acquired Viptela and Meraki. My wager? I consider that Aruba Central will likely be phased out for Mist. This can take just a few years to occur. If HPE stops including options to Aruba Central, then take that as an indication that Mist is taking on right here.
• Take away channel and gross sales redundancy. Throughout M&A exercise of alike portfolios, gross sales redundancies are eradicated. This can rock the channel and trigger a whole lot of channel battle between HPE Aruba and Juniper resellers. Juniper resellers will stick with Juniper for a while however will finally both drop the portfolio — until the VAR was an HPE reseller — or decide up Arista.