HPE Aruba Networking Central Expands AI-Powered Automation and Third-Party Device Monitoring

HPE expands AI-powered automation, introduces monitoring for third-party devices and end-user experience from HPE Aruba Networking Central

Hewlett Packard Enterprise installs new signage on the exterior of its Palo Alto, CA headquarters. CREDIT: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Growth of HPE Aruba Networking Central customer base and data lake accelerates better AI insights and improved network management, security, performance and visibility Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced the expansion of HPE Aruba Networking Central, its security-first, AI-powered network management solution, with new AI insights and capabilities that include integration of OpsRamp for third-party network device monitoring of industry vendors such as Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Palo Alto Networks. New capabilities of HPE Aruba Networking Central also include an improved network device configuration engine, expanded network observability, and AI-generated network optimizations, powered by AI insights from a rapidly growing customer base. "HPE Aruba Networking Central is advancing AI Networking with new next-generation capabilities, built to enhance network automation with AI-powered insights," said David Hughes, chief product officer, HPE Aruba Networking. "We are expanding our AI-powered insights for networking and security to cover products from a wide range of industry vendors, offering customers a huge advantage in their ability to control, predict, and manage their network, putting them in a strong position to execute their AI Networking strategies." Acquired by HPE in 2023, OpsRamp increases HPE Aruba Networking Central's contextual network observability by adding insights from network devices such as wireless access points, switches, firewalls, and routers across a comprehensive range of vendors. This new option helps reduce heterogenous network blind spots and accelerates common health monitoring and troubleshooting tasks. HPE Aruba Networking Central's Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) capabilities have also been expanded with the integration of HPE Aruba Networking User Experience Insight (UXI) monitoring natively into its interface. When combined with HPE Aruba Networking UXI sensors, this capability continuously monitors service level agreement (SLA) adherence from the user to the application from a single pane of glass. To further streamline network configurations at scale, HPE Aruba Networking Central's device management includes the addition of a common configuration model across HPE Aruba Networking wired, wireless, and gateway products, new hierarchical configurations capabilities, and 90 new APIs. "Deploying, upgrading and patching a global network is complex and time consuming," said Keven McCammon, Global Head of Digital Infrastructure Services at Henkel Corporation. "With the latest version of HPE Aruba Networking Central we look forward to increased automation that reduces our deployment windows across 400+ sites from weeks to hours." "Networks of today are increasingly complex with an influx of customer interactions, IoT devices, AI data, and security threats. IT teams are being asked to do more with less and need network automation solutions that assure service integrity and accelerate troubleshooting," asserts Mark Leary, research director, network observability and automation for IDC. "With the integration of third-party monitoring in HPE Aruba Networking Central, customers can gain essential insights across their end-to-end network infrastructure and promote a more unified and streamlined approach to network management. Contextual network observability is essential in this hyper-connected digital era. It enables network teams to work smarter, heighten resource efficiency, and deliver more value with the resources they have." All of the aforementioned improvements will be further enhanced with three times more AI trained models added over the last six months that significantly reduce the time and effort to plan, deploy, manage, troubleshoot and optimize networks. Newly trained and tuned classification AI models are now derived from a data lake with telemetry from more than 4.6 million network-managed devices and more than 1.6 billion unique customer endpoints, marking an exponential growth in 2024. Earlier this year, HPE Aruba Networking announced the expansion of its AIOps network management capabilities by integrating multiple generative AI (GenAI) Large Language Models (LLMs) within HPE Aruba Networking Central. In 2024, HPE also introduced new AI-powered security observability and monitoring features with HPE Aruba Networking Central to help address IoT security risks, in addition to the launch of behavioral analytics-based network detection and response (NDR) capabilities, also delivered by HPE Aruba Networking Central. HPE Aruba Networking Central is a cloud-scale network management solution sold as a SaaS and also included as part of an HPE GreenLake for Networking (NaaS) subscription available through the HPE GreenLake platform. AI Networking capabilities will be available in public preview starting October 2024. Third-party monitoring, UXI integration and select device configuration capabilities will be added to the public preview prior to year-end 2024. Additional Resources: Read more about today's announcement in the HPE Aruba Networking blog, "Raising the Bar on Network Observability and AI with New HPE Aruba Networking Central"AI Networking: Broader view and trends in the market on-demand webcast by the 650 GroupHenkel Corporation embraces AI Networking for insights and management with HPE Aruba Networking Central About Hewlett Packard Enterprise Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open, and intelligent technology solutions as a service. With offerings spanning Cloud Services, Compute, High Performance Computing & AI, Intelligent Edge, Software, and Storage, HPE provides a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, helping customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit: www.hpe.com

HPE Aruba Central Gets AI Boost As Third-Party Network Monitoring Unlocked

HPE Aruba Networking Central will be able to extend monitoring beyond HPE Aruba-based networks with views into Cisco, Palo Alto and Juniper networks, among others, across the entire networking stack. It's a feat that's a first for the networking industry, according to HPE Aruba. HPE Aruba Networking's flagship network management platform is being injected with more AI capabilities that will allow third-party monitoring of customer networks, including networks equipped with competitor gear from the likes Cisco Systems and Palo Alto Networks. To make it happen, HPE Aruba Networking Central is being integrated with technology from OpsRamp, which HPE acquired in 2023, for expanded observability. The soon-to-be released latest edition of the platform is also gaining new visibility and experience monitoring features, Alan Ni, senior director of edge marketing for HPE Aruba, told CRN. "With this new version, we really doubled down, or I'd say, tripled down, on the amount of AI that we're putting into the product, and it's now focused around things like automation of configuration, etc. We've also expanded the ability to not just be able to monitor and manage Aruba devices but provide monitoring capability for leading third-party manufacturers in networking," Ni said. [Related: HPE Debuts Enterprise Private 5G, Plans To Integrate With HPE Aruba] OpsRamp technology, now natively integrated into the Central platform, will provide more context and networking insights with the addition of views into network devices such as wireless access points, switches, firewalls, and routers across a range of vendors, according to HPE Aruba. Third-party monitoring across the full networking stack is a feat that HPE Aruba is very proud to reveal, Ni said. "This is not just third-party wireless access points or switches, but these could be routers, firewalls, [or] things that sit within the network real estate and it's super important because we recognize a lot of our customers have heterogeneous environments," he said. "This was a blind spot when we were looking at the user experience and trying to measure user experience or troubleshoot." Up until now, HPE Aruba could monitor only third-party access points and switches via its AirWave technology, which was not part of the cloud-based Central platform. "We're demonstrating our innovation and the ability to respond to customer demand and be able to do it at cloud scale," Ni said. Jasper, Indiana-based HPE Aruba partner PIER Group is no stranger to managing large university campuses with hundreds of thousands of access points, switches, users and devices. Having OpsRamp technology built into the Central platform is "huge," according to Shannon Champion, vice president of solutions architecture for HPE Aruba partner Pier Group. "No one has one vendor, period. That doesn't scale. But with the technology the way it is, there's no reason why I can't have a single configuration across multiple product generations and vendors in the long run, which is a huge resource savings," he said. Without it, network configuration and management become "very complicated, very quick," Champion said. "This [addition] has been a long time coming," he added. Expanded AI Networking HPE Aruba's data lake has expanded significantly in the last six months, adding to the company's AI prowess, Ni said. The platform has three times more AI-powered recommendations for network optimization since March 2024. As of March 2024, HPE Aruba had four million network devices under management with Central and one billion unique endpoints served by those 4 million devices. The company six months later now has 4.7 network devices and 1.6 billion endpoints respectively, Ni said. "That's really eye-opening growth numbers for us, and not just growth in terms of sheer numbers, but increasing the amount of telemetry that our data lakes have," he said. "It's not just the data science that's applied, but it's also the breadth in the scale of the data lake. And this growth really does give us a huge key advantage here." HPE Aruba Networking Central's Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) capabilities have also been expanded. HPE Aruba Networking User Experience Insight (UXI) monitoring, which HPE Aruba brought in via its acquisition of Cape Networks in 20218, has been integrated into Central's interface, enabling continuously monitor service level agreement (SLA) adherence from user to the application from a single pane of glass. To simplify network configurations at scale, HPE Aruba Networking Central's device management will now include a common configuration model across HPE Aruba Networking wired, wireless, and gateway products, new hierarchical configurations capabilities, and 90 new APIs, according to the company. "With this new version of Central ... it's really focused around increasing the amount of AI insights that we're driving, third-party monitoring, revised configuration and finally, really expanding on the digital experience that we're providing to our end users," Ni said. "We're expanding what our definition is of AI networking." The updates to HPE Aruba Networking Central will be going into public preview for partners and end customers on October 1, the company said. HPE Aruba Networking in March announced the expansion of its AIOps network management capabilities by integrating its own GenAI Large Language Models (LLMs) inside HPE Aruba Networking Central.

HPE Aruba enhances AI network management with new features By Investing.com

HOUSTON - Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: NYSE:HPE) has expanded the capabilities of its HPE Aruba Networking Central platform, introducing new artificial intelligence (AI) insights and functionalities. This includes third-party network device monitoring for vendors such as Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), and Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW) through the integration of OpsRamp. The enhanced features of HPE Aruba Networking Central are designed to improve network device configuration, expand network observability, and provide AI-generated network optimizations. These improvements are informed by AI insights derived from a growing customer base and a significant increase in network-managed devices and customer endpoints data. David Hughes, HPE Aruba Networking's chief product officer, emphasized the advancement of AI in networking with these next-generation capabilities. He stated that the expansion would offer customers a substantial advantage in managing and predicting network performance. The integration of OpsRamp, acquired by HPE in 2023, aims to minimize blind spots in heterogeneous networks and facilitate health monitoring and troubleshooting. HPE Aruba Networking Central's Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) has also been improved with the native integration of User Experience Insight (UXI) monitoring. The platform's device management now includes a common configuration model across various HPE Aruba Networking products, new hierarchical configuration capabilities, and 90 new APIs. These enhancements are expected to significantly reduce the time required for network deployment across multiple sites. According to Keven McCammon, Global Head of Digital Infrastructure Services at Henkel Corporation, the latest version of HPE Aruba Networking Central is anticipated to automate processes, reducing deployment windows from weeks to hours. Mark Leary, research director at IDC, highlights the importance of contextual network observability in today's complex network environments. He suggests that the integration of third-party monitoring can offer comprehensive insights for a more unified network management approach. The platform's AI model has been enriched with three times more AI trained models over the past six months. These models are trained on a data lake with telemetry from millions of network-managed devices and billions of unique customer endpoints. HPE Aruba Networking Central, available as a SaaS or part of an HPE GreenLake for Networking subscription, will offer a public preview of these AI Networking capabilities starting October 2024, with third-party monitoring, UXI integration, and select device configuration features to follow before the end of the year. This expansion is based on a press release statement from HPE. In other recent news, HP (NYSE:HPQ) Enterprise's strategic decision to acquire Juniper Networks is expected to significantly reshape the company's revenue composition. Citi, maintaining a neutral stance, anticipates the network segment to contribute over 50% of adjusted operating income, up from the current 30%. BofA Securities, upgrading HP Enterprise to a Buy rating, expects the new CFO, Marie Myers, to drive substantial cost reductions, and foresees revenue and cost synergies following the Juniper acquisition. Evercore ISI maintains an In-Line rating, adjusting its forecast for the accretive value of Juniper to HP Enterprise, now anticipating a ~7% earnings boost in fiscal year 2025. However, the firm does note uncertainties regarding the integration process and potential portfolio consolidation. Loop Capital Markets, while maintaining a neutral rating, recognizes HP Enterprise's strong quarter-over-quarter momentum in Gen AI server sales and the potential for the Juniper Networks acquisition to address margin concerns. In terms of financial performance, HP Enterprise reported a 10% year-over-year increase in third-quarter fiscal year 2024 revenue, reaching $7.7 billion, with AI system revenues marking a 40% increase from the previous quarter, totaling $1.3 billion. However, the Hybrid Cloud and Intelligent Edge segments saw year-over-year revenue declines of 7% and 23% respectively. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) continues to enhance its HPE Aruba Networking Central platform, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver advanced network management solutions. As the company expands its capabilities, it's worth noting that HPE is not only a prominent player in the Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals industry but also trades at a low P/E ratio relative to near-term earnings growth, according to InvestingPro Tips. This suggests that the company's stock could be undervalued given its growth prospects. InvestingPro Data shows a market capitalization of $24.45 billion, indicating a substantial presence in the market. The company boasts a P/E ratio of 13.23, which adjusts to 11.95 when looking at the last twelve months as of Q3 2024, reflecting a company that might be attractively priced relative to its earnings. The data also reveals a revenue of $29.02 billion during the same period, although there was a slight revenue decline of 2.14%. Despite this, the company's gross profit margin stands at a healthy 33.88%. For investors interested in dividend-paying stocks, HPE has maintained dividend payments for 10 consecutive years, with a current dividend yield of 2.76%. This consistent return to shareholders underscores the company's financial stability and commitment to providing shareholder value. For those seeking more in-depth analysis, InvestingPro offers additional tips on HPE, which can be accessed at https://www.investing.com/pro/HPE. These tips can provide investors with further insights into the company's financial health and future outlook.