Summary bullets:
• The long-awaited merger is nearly here
• The impact of these concessions will play out over time
The long, drawn-out saga of HPE’s quest to buy Juniper has reached another milestone. HPE and the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) have reached a deal that, pending judicial approval, will allow the transaction to complete. However, there are a couple of concessions on HPE’s part. First it must divest its HPE Aruba Instant On business within 180 days to satisfy the DoJ’s worries about Wi-Fi market share of the combined companies. Second, HPE must auction off a perpetual, non-exclusive license to the source code for AI Ops for Mist.
The impact to HPE is more around the Instant On business. HPE’s networking division, in all its many perturbations dating all the way back to its original ProCurve networking products, has had a strong presence in the SMB/SME market. Loss of the Instant On business will be a blow to any SMB/SME ambitions HPE may have. However, this comes in exchange for access to the data center networking market, a much more mature AI to base their networking and other products on, and access to the security and telco markets that the acquisition of Juniper will facilitate.
When it comes to having to license the AI Ops for Mist product, the potential competitive issues for HPE really depend on who wins the auction. A direct networking competitor would be the worst result for HPE. But if if AI Ops for Mist by more of a generalized Ops-focused vendor, it would be easier for HPE to compete. HPE already has its OpsRamp solution and folding the Mist AI into it should be technically doable if it becomes a competitive issue. The big place for AI Ops for Mist is of course in the networking division, where HPE can claim that Mist AI is more mature than the AI offered by other networking competitors.
One last thing on the subject – it is food for thought to ponder where the HPE Aruba Instant On solution may land. With security and networking becoming so interconnected to meet the enterprise goals of security, simplicity, and operational efficiency, there very well may be a security company out there that would like to start their networking journey and Instant On would be a place to start in the SMB/SME market. Companies like Palo Alto Networks come to mind, or a networking vendor that wants to crack the SMB/SME market like Arista. All of that, including how much it will cost to buy Instant On, is a matter of speculation. Over the next few months there will no doubt be more news on HPE’s latest networking acquisition and the fallout from the concessions made to the DoJ.