Should we call HPE a networking company from now on? After acquiring Juniper Networks, it will have a solid networking portfolio.
A Q&A with HPE CEO Antonio Neri is never boring. Neri was a guest this week at the 2024 XChange Best of Breed conference in Atlanta. There he talked about the direction his company is taking, which Neri says is shifting more and more toward the networking business. “At our core, we are becoming a network business. And I think that’s the big opportunity to give customers a more modern, AI-driven experience at the network level.”
Neri is referring to the Juniper Networks acquisition. That was announced in January, but it took a while for HPE to get the green light from regulators to move forward with plans. Neri confirms that all the paperwork is as good as done.
This will give HPE’s networking division a big boost. “Once the transaction is completed, the networking business will account for one-third of operating income and 50 percent of operating profit,” Neri said.
No overlap
So what about Aruba Networks, the networking subsidiary adopted by HPE in 2015? Neri is convinced the two companies don’t get in each other’s way. “People sometimes get a little confused, but actually there is no overlap. With HPE Aruba, we built nice portfolio, but at the upper end of the enterprise. Now we can serve all segments of the market.”
At HPE Discover, Neri already emphasized that Juniper Networks was the next piece of the puzzle in completing the edge-to-cloud strategy that HPE is pursuing. He repeated those words again in Atlanta: “This is the first time in our history that we own the full intellectual property, from silicon to the infrastructure to the operating system, through the software services and security, to provide that modern edge-to-cloud networking structure.”
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As for who Neri sees as his opponent in the networking industry, he likewise does not hide it. “So don’t think that HPE and Juniper are opposed to each other. It’s HPE plus Juniper against the multiple architectures we have in the market with Cisco. We are becoming a networking company, something Cisco has probably forgotten a little bit now.”
At the core, we are becoming a network company. Something Cisco has probably forgotten.
Antonio Neri, CEO HPE