HPE raises networking forecast by $11B as Juniper integration accelerates AI-native portfolio

HPE broadly expands AI-native networking, hybrid cloud and storage offerings - SiliconANGLE

HPE broadly expands AI-native networking, hybrid cloud and storage offerings Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. is using its Discover Barcelona 2025 event today to announce a broad expansion of its networking, hybrid cloud and data infrastructure portfolio, highlighting early integration milestones following its recent acquisition of Juniper Networks Inc. The company detailed new switches and routers for artificial intelligence workloads, expanded AI operations capabilities and updates across its GreenLake and Morpheus platforms. Executives said the announcements are intended to align compute, storage and networking under a consistent architecture for enterprise and cloud environments. HPE said the networking updates reflect progress made only five months after closing the Juniper acquisition. The company introduced shared AIOps features for HPE Aruba Networking Central and HPE Juniper Networking Mist and described plans to unify user experiences across both platforms. The company said the goal is a consistent operational model across cloud and on-premises deployments. Rami Rahim, executive vice president and general manager of HPE Networking and the former chief executive officer of Juniper Networks, said the combined portfolio reflects changes in how AI clusters are built and connected. "In the front end, this connects clusters to users, to applications and microservices," he said. "In the back end, we're connecting [graphic processing units] across racks." Rahim said InfiniBand, the high-performance networking standard that uses a switched fabric to provide high throughput and low latency, "is gradually migrating to Ethernet," and that this shift has created new opportunities for Ethernet-based products. "InfiniBand will be around for a while," he said. "That does not change the fact that Ethernet is a huge and growing opportunity." Rahim said the distinction between the Aruba Central and Juniper Mist platforms will diminish over time. "It's going to disappear because the experience to the end customer is going to be identical irrespective of which platform you're on," he said. HPE introduced multiple hardware platforms aimed at scale-out and edge routing for AI clusters. The HPE Juniper Networking QFX5250 switch uses Broadcom Inc.'s Tomahawk 6 silicon and provides 102.4 terabits per second of bandwidth. The company said the switch is liquid-cooled and ready to support Ultra Ethernet Transport, a new protocol designed for high-performance, scalable data center networks. Rahim called it "the world's highest-performance, 100% liquid-cooled, Ultra Ethernet transport-ready switch built on the Broadcom Tomahawk 6 processor." HPE also announced the MX301 multiservice edge router, positioned as a compact on-ramp for distributed inference clusters. The single rack unit router "packs all of the performance, 1.6 terabits per second, and all of the flexibility that our customers have come to love about DMX," Rahim said. The company said it is also developing an Ethernet-based scale-up switch for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Helios rack-scale AI reference design. Rahim said the switch is "an industry-first scale-up solution using standard Ethernet" and is intended to support open standards. HPE said it has extended partnerships with Nvidia Corp. and AMD to support AI factories, long-haul data center interconnects and rack-scale systems. The company said the joint work with Nvidia now includes routing layers using the MX and PTX high-speed routing platforms. "These joint solutions will give our customers the assurance they need to deploy our routing technology alongside Nvidia's cutting-edge products with full confidence," Rahim said. He said Helios is "the first rack-scale AI reference design from AMD, built fully on the open rack-wide standard," an open-source data center rack standard specifically managed by the Open Compute Project and meant to meet the extreme power, cooling and serviceability demands of AI systems. New AIOps features are designed to unify management across compute, storage, networking and cloud environments. The company said HPE OpsRamp integrations now bring together telemetry from its Compute Ops Management cloud-based server management console, Aruba Networking Central and Juniper Apstra networking management platform into a single view. HPE also added Model Context Protocol support to GreenLake and OpsRamp to allow third-party AI agents to interpret context drawn from OpsRamp's multi-vendor integrations. Additional updates include a new Compute Copilot interface for ProLiant systems. "You now have a contextual text-based interface that allows you to ask questions and get recommendations," said Fidelma Russo, HPE's chief technology officer. The new HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000 Data Intelligence Node, built on an Nvidia AI Data Platform reference design, enriches and structures data as it enters storage. "It does metadata tagging, embedded vector generation, and vector-ready formatting, and all of these happen automatically," Russo said. The company said the system aims to accelerate data preparation for GPU workloads. HPE also added two new models to its StoreOnce backup and data protection systems. The all-flash StoreOnce 7700 delivers up to 300 terabytes per hour for data ingest. "We've redesigned the entire I/O path to optimize for flash," Russo said, noting that modern recovery workloads increasingly involve random access patterns. The hybrid StoreOnce 5720 targets broader enterprise workloads. Expanded virtualization capabilities are supported by additions to the Morpheus hybrid cloud management platform. Morpheus VM Essentials and Morpheus Enterprise Software. Updates include software-defined networking, micro-segmentation, stretched clusters, continuous data protection with HPE Zerto and image-based backup using software from Veeam Software Corp. The company said these features are intended to provide a full alternative for customers evaluating virtualization alternatives. Morpheus now also integrates with Juniper Apstra to automate switch configurations and maintain consistent VLAN and security policies. The company said the update is intended to eliminate configuration errors when virtual machines move across environments. Performance and security enhancements to HPE's Private Cloud AI platform include Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 GPUs across configurations, hardened Nvidia Inference Microservices, air-gapped deployment options and GPU fractionalization using Nvidia Multi-Instance GPU. Russo said the configuration is "ideal for mixed HPC and AI workloads" and supports systems based on the ARM reduced instruction set computing architecture. HPE Financial Services will provide zero-percent financing for networking AIOps software and additional programs that provide the equivalent of 10% savings for customers leasing networking systems built for AI workloads. Availability timelines are early 2026 for full OpsRamp MCP support, January 2026 for the X10000 Data Intelligence Node and spring 2026 for StoreOnce 5720 and 7700. Rahim said HPE will measure the success of the Juniper acquisition over the next year by evaluating integration progress and market growth. "Success means that we bring the two businesses together without in any way disrupting our customers," he said. He said the combined companies aim to grow faster than competitors across routing, campus and branch networking, data center solutions and security.

HPE Increases Networking Revenue Forecast by $11B In Wake of Juniper Networks Integration 'Momentum'

'The new combined networking team is performing exceptionally well,' says HPE CEO Antonio Neri. HPE is raising its revenue forecast for its networking business by $11 billion to mid-single digit growth for the fiscal year in the wake of its "momentum" integrating its $13.4 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, said HPE CEO Antonio Neri. "We have an incredible portfolio," said Neri in a conference call with analysts after HPE reported a whopping 150 percent increase in networking revenue to $2.8 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter ended October 31, the first full quarter with Juniper as part of the company. "In the campus and branch we continue to get tremendous traction. Both platforms are winning in the market." Neri said he was "pleased with the significant progress" the company has made in forming what he called a "new unified leader" in networking. "In the five months since closing the transaction we have brought together our teams, technologies and go-to-market strategies and the response from our employees, customers, partners and the industry at large has been overwhelmingly positive," he said. "They are already seeing the benefits of our combined portfolio, the innovation we are driving and the cohesive customer experience we now deliver. Across the industry, stakeholders have expressed enthusiasm for the combined companies' ability to accelerate innovation, deliver greater value and help organizations build secure, modern and high-performance networks for the future. The new combined networking team is performing exceptionally well." The new guidance of mid-single digit growth is up from a two to five percent earlier forecast. HPE also raised its non-GAAP earnings per share by five cents per share at the midpoint and its free cash flow by $100 million. The new guidance comes after HPE this week unveiled at HPE Discover Barcelona a new innovation-packed combined Aruba and Juniper Networks networking portfolio that is receiving rave reviews from partners. Neri, for his part, told analysts that he expects channel partners to play a big part in driving networking revenue acceleration. "They are all super excited about that part of the business," he said. "We had major wins on both sides (Aruba and Juniper). We expect that to continue in 2026." The stronger networking revenue guidance comes with HPE set as of January 1 to unify its Aruba and Juniper networking sales teams into a single organization with a new "unified sales compensation plan promoting consistency across the integrated networking team," said HPE Chief Financial Officer Marie Myers. "These actions position us well to build on the momentum we have established and capitalize on the significant market opportunities ahead," she said. HPE's networking business will account for more than 50 percent of the company's operating profit for the year. "This company in 2026 will be at the core a networking-centric company, which is the core foundation by which we deliver both cloud and AI solutions for all segments of the market whether it is sovereign, enterprise or service providers," Neri said in an interview with CRN before the conference call with analysts. The new combined HPE Aruba and Juniper product blitz moves key AI networking capabilities from Juniper Mist to HPE Aruba Networking Central and at the same time moves HPE Aruba AI technology to Juniper Mist. Neri said one of the keys to the rapid integration of the two networking product sets is that both Aruba and Juniper are modern network architectures. "Both are microservices, API driven, cloud native and AI was used from the beginning on both sides of the fence," he said. "You have an advantage there so you can cross-pollinate very, very quickly both platforms." Under the cross-pollination strategy, HPE Juniper Networking's renowned Mist AI Large Experience Model and Marvis AI virtual assistant will be available in the first quarter next year on HPE Networking Central. In addition, HPE Aruba's AI-based client profiling capabilities and AI organizational insight functionality will move in the first quarter next year to HPE Juniper Mist. The product blitz also includes what HPE is calling the "world's highest performance Ultra Ethernet Transport Ready" network switch: the 100 percent liquid-cooled HPE Juniper Networking QFX5250, which will be available in the first quarter. Dan Molina, co-president and CTO of Nth Generation, San Diego, No. 307 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, said he has been blown away by how quickly HPE has brought a combined Aruba-Juniper networking portfolio to the market. "Historically when there are acquisitions, the integration takes quite a long time," he said. "That's not the case here. The acquisition was completed five months ago and HPE is set to release product in Q1 next year. That is quite impressive!" Molina said the new combined portfolio makes HPE a "mighty force" in the networking market. "Juniper Networks brings HPE an AI-based networking platform in Mist that has been around for 10 years," he said. "It's a mature platform. AI is only as good as the data that is fed into it. Having a platform that has been around for 10 years means that it can be trusted a lot more than a new platform." Molina said he expects Nth Generation's HPE business to grow more than 20 percent next year powered by the new combined Aruba-Juniper Networks portfolio and the AI opportunity. "The opportunity is very significant for us because of the HPE acquisition of Juniper," he said. "The Juniper-Aruba merger creates fresh opportunities for us. HPE also continues to provide quality AI solutions. We are seeing a growing pipeline of AI projects powered by HPE compute, storage and networking." Neri, for his part, said the payback for customers with the Juniper Aruba AI networking platform is dramatic given that it can reduce network trouble tickets by 90 percent. "That's a huge, huge productivity savings for customers because they don't need people managing networks," he said. "And as we put more AI into this then you can automate and empower AI to take actions for you. That means less downtime, less opex to run these networks." Neri said customers are interested in a "modern" networking approach and an alternative to the status quo. "That's why we are building a new networking leader in the market," he said. Overall for the quarter, HPE reported non-GAAP earnings per share of 62 cents per share on a 14 percent increase in sales to $9.7 billion. That compares with the Zacks consensus estimate of 59 cents per share on sales of $9.96 billion. HPE shares were down $2.11 or nine percent in after-hours trading to $20.77. Neri said he sees 2026 as a year to drive the "transformation" of HPE to new heights based on its new position as a network-centric company with a "modern, secure AI networking" portfolio. "Our strategy is working and the Juniper integration is working," he said.

HPE Partners Ready To Take On Cisco With New Aruba-Juniper Combined Networking Portfolio

'HPE is seizing the opportunity and putting on a full court press to grab share against Cisco with products that are market disruptors,' says PKA Technologies Chief Technology Officer Patrick Shelley. HPE partners said they are ready to grab share from network market leader Cisco with the new combined Aruba-Juniper network portfolio that is being unveiled at HPE Discover Barcelona this week. "The AI networking war is on," said Patrick Shelley, chief technology officer at PKA Technologies, a Montvale, N.J. solution provider, reacting to the new combined Juniper-Aruba networking lineup. "HPE is seizing the opportunity and putting on a full-court press to grab share against Cisco with products that are market disruptors. HPE has done an incredible job getting product out so quickly. Now it's up to partners like PKA to educate our customer base and go out and sell it." Shelley said there is an "absolutely huge opportunity" for HPE partners to attack the Cisco network installed base. "Customers are looking for new options," he said. "I think there is definitely going to be share shift in HPE's favor." Among the new products unveiled at HPE Discover in Barcelona on Wednesday are a new Juniper-Aruba dual platform Wi-Fi 7 Access Point that will be delivered in the third quarter next year HPE is also introducing a new AI data center switch, HPE Juniper Networking QFX5250, that it is touting as the "world's highest performance Ultra Ethernet Transport Ready" network switch. HPE Networking Vice President of Products and Solutions Jeff Aaron says the combined Aruba and Juniper Mist portfolio gives the AI networking powerhouse the muscle to displace Cisco as the number one wireless networking provider. "We feel that we can be number one in wireless," said Aaron in an interview with CRN. "We have the best solutions with Juniper Mist and the Aruba solutions." Cisco declined to comment. Shelley (pictured) said he was shocked that HPE was able to pull together a combined HPE-Juniper portfolio so quickly, just five months after acquiring Juniper Networks for $13.4 billion five months ago. "This gives customers options," he said. "I'm looking forward to seeing all the technical detail on the new products." The biggest surprise, said Shelley, is the new HPE Juniper Networking QFX525 switch, which will be available in the first-quarter next year. He said the switch addresses network shortcomings that could hold back AI. "The biggest problem in implementing AI is the network," he said. "Everybody thinks about GPUs and servers and running the workloads. The network is almost an afterthought until they see the performance issues. Almost as important as the GPU is to the server, the network is to AI. It looks like HPE has put together an incredibly powerful switch at a time when customers are realizing their old network is not going to cut it anymore with the new AI workloads." Shelley said the new combined HPE Aruba-Juniper portfolio is a testament to HPE CEO Antonio Neri's vision to transform HPE into a networking company with the acquisition of Juniper Networks. "This proves it," he said. With the acquisition of Juniper, HPE has effectively doubled the size of its networking business with more than 50 percent of its operating income now coming from networking. Michael Maher, director of professional services at CPP Associates, Clinton, New Jersey, said he sees the new combined portfolio from the new Juniper to Aruba Network Central integrations and vice versa to the new breakthrough 5250 switch and the edge router are destined to "reshape how people do networking on a day to day" basis. "HPE is providing ways to both improve network performance and reduce risk to the business overall," he said. "Now you have the ability to network together your GPUs at the speed that is really required to get the most value out of your AI investments. It's exciting!" Ultimately, Maher said, the integration of AI into wired and wireless for network management and service delivery is going to "reduce deployment times, increase performance and increase value back to the business." With the new portfolio, the AI networking sales opportunity is one of the biggest opportunities for CPP to grow the business, said Maher. "Our networking business is growing and this just gives us more ammunition to go after the competition, add value to our customers and to ensure that our customer's infrastructures are resilient and reliable as the industry continues to evolve at a breakneck pace." C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Independence, Ohio-based Advizex, No. 129 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, said the new portfolio provides the firepower for Advizex to double the company's networking business over the next year. "HPE is doubling down with a parallel approach to the business that gives us the capability to accelerate our networking business," he said. "They are bringing this to market fast which is going to drive faster customer adoption. HPE is bringing viable solutions that are going to run in parallel. Customers are going to gravitate to that kind of solution because it builds into what they want to do with AI in the future. This gives them an AI presence they did not have before." Advizex has already seen "tremendous adoption" for networking-as-a-service solutions, said Howdyshell. The new combined HPE-Aruba-Juniper networking portfolio is going to drive even further adoption, he said. "This is an opportunity for us to grab networking share," said Howdyshell.

HPE Networking Unveils First Combined Juniper-Aruba Networking Products

HPE Networking is combining what it is calling the "best" of both Juniper Mist and HPE Aruba Networking in its first new networking products since HPE acquired Juniper Networks for $13.4 billion five months ago. Among the biggest breakthroughs is the new HPE Aruba-Juniper dual platform Wi-Fi 7 Access Point that will be delivered in the third quarter of next year, providing "massive advantages" for HPE Networking customers, said HPE Networking President and General Manager Rami Rahim. "Dual platform design lets our customers choose their preferred control point, whether it is Mist or Aruba Central, and switch seamlessly between platforms as their needs evolve with no new hardware involved in that decision," said Rahim in a press briefing on the new HPE Networking product blitz, which was unveiled Wednesday at the HPE Discover conference Barcelona. "It gives customers the ultimate peace of mind with the investment protection that this provides them." The new combined HPE Aruba and Juniper product barrage moves key AI networking capabilities from Juniper Mist to HPE Aruba Networking Central and at the same time moves HPE Aruba AI technology to Mist. Under the cross-pollination strategy, HPE Juniper Networking's renowned Mist AI Large Experience Model (LEM) and Marvis AI virtual assistant will be available in the first quarter of next year on HPE Networking Central. In addition, HPE Aruba's AI-based client profiling capabilities and AI organizational insight functionality in the first quarter of next year will move to HPE Juniper Mist. HPE is also making Aruba Networking's Agentic Mesh Technology available for Juniper Mist, bringing AI-based anomaly detection and root cause analysis with autonomous networking capabilities to the popular Mist AI networking platform. "We're going to continue to do this cross-pollination, and as we do this, we're going to bring the best of both platforms to all users," said Rahim. "Nobody gets left behind. Everybody gets to participate in the rapid pace of innovation that we will achieve through this build-once and deploy-twice model. And, honestly, I'm just delighted at the speed at which the team has been able to execute on this strategy and to demonstrate for our customers that they can have the best of both worlds." Rahim said the new products are a testament to the "great progress" that the HPE Networking team has made unifying its portfolio. "I assure you we are just getting started here," he said. Here is a look at the first combined new networking products since HPE acquired Juniper Networks.

HPE Disrupts Networking Industry with Expanded Ai-Native Portfolio

HPE accelerated its AI infrastructure leadership with an expansion of its secure, AI-native networking portfolio that leverages HPE Aruba Networking and HPE Juniper Networking for self-driving operations to maximize performance and scale for AI workloads. This expansion includes new AIOps capabilities and common hardware that deliver a consistent, self-driving experience across both HPE Aruba Networking Central and HPE Juniper Networked Mist operations platforms. Coupled with updates to HPE OpsRamp Software and new HPE Juniper Networking switching and routing introductions, HPE expands the role of the network as the critical foundation enabling AI and cloud performance, while simplifying IT operations across hybrid environments using agentic AI compatible with GreenLake Intelligence. In a short period of time, HPE has demonstrated its ability to bring together the best of HPE Aruba NetworkingCentral and HPE Juniper NetworkING Mist, leveraging a common agentic AI and microservices framework to provide investment protection, while integrating key AI for networks features for a consistent experience and introducing new AI for network capabilities across both domains: HPE Juniper Networking Mist Large Experience Model (LEM), which uses billions of data points from apps such as Zoom and Teams, combined with synthetic data from digital twins to rapidly detect, fix, and predict video issues, will now be available in HPE Aruba Networking central. HPE Aruba Networking's Agentic Mesh technology will be available for Mist, enhancing anomaly detection and root-cause analysis with advanced reasoning and autonomous or assistive actions. Also prior to HPE Discover Barcelona 2025, HPE unveiled new high-performance networking solutions with NVIDIA and AMD to accelerate AI deployments, including: HPE's solutions for AI factories have been extended to include HPE Juniper Networking edge on-ramp and long haul data center interconnect (DCI). Agentic Root Causing & Model Context Protocol (MCP) Support (limited availability) in both GreenLake and HPEOpsRamp Software allows customers to connect AI agents from third-party software for no-code integrations, and enriches those agents, helping GreenLake Intelligence eliminate blind spots in dynamic environments. HPEFS is also offering a special financing program that provides the equivalent of 10% cash savings for customers leasing networking that supports AI workloads including datacenter networking and enterprise routing, and for those replacing older technology, an optional multi-OEM take out service is available, with revenue share on resale. Availability: HPE Juniper Networked QFX5250 switch will be available in First Quarter 2026; HPE Juniper Networking MX301 multiservice edge router will be available in December 2025; HPE OpsRamp support and integrations timeline: Model Context Protocol: Available now for select customers with full availability early 2026; Compute Ops Management: Available December 2025; Storage manager: Available February 2026; Apstra Data Center Director: Available February 2026.