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I am always wary of selecting vendors and products that are going through an acquisition. There is inherent uncertainty regarding integration, existing support agreements, and development roadmaps, see Broadcom and VMware for example. However, it’s been nearly a year since HPE closed its acquisition of Juniper and I think it’s fair to say it’s looking like a good fit.
From day one there has been a commitment from Juniper to honour existing contracts for the lifetime of the products. The Juniper channel has been enabled to cross-sell all HPE solutions and vice versa. Then of course there is product integration, which is what I want to talk about today. There is a lot of focus on areas such as Mist but something I’d thought about less until now is the gaps in the HPE Networking portfolio that Juniper fills.
Starting with integration, Juniper’s network co-pilot or Virtual Network Assistant, Marvis will be integrated into Aruba Central. In parallel, Apstra and Mist will be integrated with the HPE GreenLake cloud management tool, creating a unified management plane for the branch, campus, and data centre. The latest HPE AP (AP-72XH) will be manageable via with Aruba Central or Mist, while Aruba Central will support Juniper’s EX switch range. FInally, new APs supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Wi-Fi 8 will aim to combine the best of HPE Aruba and Juniper Mist.
HPE has traditionally had some gaps in its networking portfolio. Next generation firewalls, carrier-grade routing, and data centre networking to name three. HPE has picked up all of these from the Juniper acquisition. Juniper’s SRX firewall range will not only fill the firewall gap but bolster HPE’s SASE solution, which combines HPE Connect, with the SD-WAN solution formerly known as Silver Peak. Juniper’s MX routers have long powered chunks of the Internet backbone, QFX switches provide a data centre fabric and Juniper PTX routers for AI network complete the portfolio.
Of course, a lot of the attention is on the Mist and wireless integration, but Juniper has provided HPE with an end-to-end networking portfolio that can provide a credible rival to Cisco.
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2025/07/hewlett-packard-enterprise-closes-acquisition-of-juniper-networks-to-offer-industry-leading-comprehensive-cloud-native-ai-driven-portfolio.html