‘You need to have a core foundation which is networking,’ said HPE CEO Antonio Neri. ‘Obviously you are going to see everything we have done with the team with HPE Aruba networking. And obviously we continue to be very excited to close with Juniper Networks once we get through the final hurdle in the United States.’
Referring to networking as the “core” of a modern IT architecture, Neri told partners: “You need to have a core foundation, which is networking. Obviously, you are going to see everything we have done with the team with HPE Aruba networking. And obviously we continue to be very excited to close with Juniper Networks once we get through the final hurdle in the United States.”
Neri (pictured above left) made the comments in a brief one on one question and answer session with HPE Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem Leader Simon Ewington (pictured above right), who has said HPE intends to bring the Juniper channel program into the new HPE unified Partner Ready Vantage program.
The HPE acquisition of Juniper Networks – which was first proposed by HPE in January 2024- has been approved by 14 other international regulators including the European Commission and the United Kingdom.
The U.S. Department of Justice, however, filed suit in January 2025, claiming the proposed merger would “significantly reduce competition and weaken innovation, resulting in large segments of the American economy paying more for less from wireless technology providers.”
HPE and Juniper have called the lawsuit, which zeros in on the wireless networking market, “fundamentally flawed.”
Neri said networking is a core foundation to deliver on the “new demands of AI to connect all your data” and thanked partners for driving HPE Aruba networking sales growth.
“When you look at the Aruba business, more than 90-plus percent of that business goes through our partners and without your support we could not deliver the performance we have been delivering. And we keep fueling that with new innovation.”
Neri told CRN earlier this month that the legal discovery process in the court case gives him “more confidence” that HPE can win the case.
“Look, there is public information now with [legal] discovery with public filings,” said Neri in an interview with CRN. “Basically, that gives us even more confidence that we think we can win this case. Now, you have to go to court and go through the process. But nothing has changed from what we have been saying for a number of months since January when they filed the claim.”
HPE partners, for their part, say they are looking forward to HPE completing the deal, which would provide a more formidable competitor to networking market leader Cisco.
Erik Krucker, CTO of Ramsey, N.J.-based Comport Consulting, No. 231 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, said in an interview after the Partner Growth Summit Session that he is hoping HPE can clear that last hurdle and bring more AI networking innovation to the market.
Krucker said Neri—who was the driving force behind HPE’s highly successful acquisition of Aruba in 2015—has been spot-on with his vision to make HPE a networking leader with a modern IT architecture for the AI era. “With AI and high-performance compute, vast networks are absolutely essential,” he said.
Krucker said he does not understand the US Department of Justice decision to contest the HPE- Juniper acquisition. “There are lots of other players (in networking),” he said. “Why the Justice Department decided to die on this hill makes no sense to me whatsoever. Cisco owns a bigger market share than a combined HPE Juniper would be.”
Krucker said he sees a combined HPE-Juniper sparking more AI networking innovation for customers. “This would provide a complete networking stack from HPE under one OS and one unified management platform for networking and WiFI, which is what Cisco is doing,” he said. “It’s good for customers and customers love Aruba. They want that [network] core consistency across the edge, core and the campus. If this acquisition goes through, HPE becomes a major player in the networking space.”
