‘Look, everybody I talk to wants this,’ says HPE CEO Antonio Neri in an interview with CRN about the Juniper Networks acquisition. ‘This is pro-competitive. Our goal is to build the best networking business on the planet, and the best networking business on the planet will deliver a strong, modern, secure AI-driven alternative in this particular part of the stack—networking—from edge to cloud.”
Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Antonio Neri said in an interview with CRN he is “very confident” that HPE will “prevail” in a court battle with the U.S. Department of Justice to complete what he called the “pro-competitive” $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.
“Look, everybody I talk to wants this,” said Neri. “This is pro-competitive. Our goal is to build the best networking business on the planet, and the best networking business on the planet will deliver a strong, modern, secure AI-driven alternative in this particular part of the stack—networking—from edge to cloud. That is our goal. Today is June 25. The trial starts on July 9, and we are very confident that we will prevail.”
The DOJ filed suit in January to squash the blockbuster deal, 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, for his part, told CRN he is “frustrated” that customers are being held back from enjoying the networking benefits of the HPE-Juniper combination.
“Obviously, it is disappointing to go through this process when you think about how much this could add to the U.S. market in terms of competition and, second, how much this would enable the U.S. to compete outside the United States,” said Neri. “Because obviously outside the United States there are more companies that participate in this market, and some of those companies have a great amount of [market] share.”
The acquisition of Juniper—which was first proposed by HPE in January 2024—has been approved by 14 international regulators, including the European Commission and the United Kingdom.
Neri earlier this week told a global audience of partners at the HPE Partner Growth Summit session at HPE Discover in Las Vegas that he is looking forward to clearing the “final hurdle” in the United States to complete the $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.
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.”
The court battle between HPE and the DOJ will take place in the U.S. Court for the Northern District of California. “We have a phenomenal lawyer that will lead this [case against the Department of Justice], and we are confident we can get through this,” said Neri.
In fact, Neri said, he is looking forward to the future when customers and partners will be able to see for themselves exactly how the HPE-Juniper combination will manifest itself in a modern secure network “from the edge to the core to the data center and then how that gets embedded into the fabric of hybrid cloud and AI.”
Partners, for their part, have told CRN that they believe the HPE acquisition of Juniper Networks would benefit customers and spark more innovation in the market by providing a formidable competitor to networking market leader Cisco Systems.
Erik Krucker, CTO of Ramsey, N.J.-based Comport Consulting, No. 231 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, said he does not understand the U.S. Department of Justice’s 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.”
Here is more of what Neri had to say in his interview with CRN, including his comments on the GreenLake Intelligence agentic AI framework and HPE’s full-stack agentic AI advantage versus competitors.
What kind of impact is the GreenLake Intelligence agentic AI framework going to have on customer and channel economics?
Look, it’s simple. It lowers the cost to run IT. It is as simple as that. In addition, the fact is IT becomes even more resilient. So you don’t have to put people in the loop. You keep them on the loop. This army of AI agents that have been trained for specific tasks can reason, can predict what comes next by looking at all the telemetry, which is an amazing way to process data that humans can’t. And then [these AI agents] do testing on the background and recommend solutions to potential problems or problems already happening. And if they get the command to go execute, they will execute it.
For us, it’s just one aspect to make our GreenLake [hybrid cloud] even more differentiated. For our partners, once they sell the platform with these capabilities they get the benefit that it takes less cost to run IT on behalf of their customers. And it provides a better, consistent, predictable experience. Then they can add their own services on top of that agentic approach.
How big a shift is this in the partner business model?
It is no different than any other big shift we are driving across the infrastructure for our hybrid offering, including with VM Essentials or AI deployments. In this case, we are using AI ourselves to make our solutions more intelligent and autonomous. That’s the big shift, and this is the only platform that can do it across all domains of IT: networking, server and storage and private cloud because of the integration with OpsRamp and even the ability to monitor Nvidia GPUs because we have now certified OpsRamp to observe the Nvidia GPUs.
How does the agentic AI story that HPE has with the full infrastructure stack with networking, compute and storage stack up against Cisco?
That’s one example of differentiation. We can provide customers the full stack, whether it’s to deploy virtualization, to provide hybrid cloud orchestration, to provide a multi-vendor runtime on-prem, to provide this intelligence across the entire stack. That is something that no other vendor can do because they only focus on one part of the stack.
Even if they build AIOps into the stack, that AIOps needs to be connected to the next one. Our approach with OpsRamp is actually very agnostic because OpsRamp can observe multi- vendor [IT estates]. You name it. It can observe Cisco, Dell, Lenovo, NetApp, Pure, so forth. That is a huge advantage for customers because in reality customers have a multi-vendor legacy infrastructure that needs to be modernized over time. But in the meantime, they can observe everything [in their IT estate] using our GreenLake platform with the integration of OpsRamp while they modernize at the pace they need to.
If you are a financial services company, we can tailor that solution to financial services. If you are a telco, obviously it’s a different solution. And as you know, we will add more once we close the Juniper [acquisition].
How much of a lead do you think you have in moving these intelligent agentic AI agents into the infrastructure market?
SaaS companies are doing it. Think about Salesforce.com. [co-founder and CEO] Marc [Benioff]. He and his team have done a great job leading with its agentic approach for Salesforce.com. We have a great partnership with them. It is also true with ServiceNow with [ServiceNow Chairman and CEO] Bill [McDermott] and his team. The extensibility of OpsRamp into ServiceNow is already built. So we can carry on that agentic approach from one platform to the next one in a seamless way.
For us it is about curating the partner ecosystem in a way that we all see the world the same way. But when it comes to that integration process, our competitors don’t have the [GreenLake] platform. Nobody obviously has GreenLake. No one has it.
No one has the depth that we have in the campus and branch with Aruba networking. The AI mesh we announced yesterday has more than 200 [AI] agents already working in the background. That is unique. Both the AI mesh and OpsRamp integration with copilots and so forth uses trillions of parameters in a context setting. Nobody has that. But obviously [our competitors] compete in different ways. Some compete just on supply chain. Some compete in pricing. But nobody has the level of depth in innovation that we are driving on behalf of enterprises.
So do you think the biggest impact of the agentic AI revolution initially will be with the Aruba agentic mesh?
It’s the whole thing. I spoke an hour ago to the Aruba customers. For those who are very networking-centric, they are experiencing this today as a part of GreenLake with Aruba Networking Central.
If you’re using GreenLake across all our products, you will see it through the OpsRamp integration. You just subscribe to OpsRamp, and you see that already today. If you use storage, you see it already with storage.
This is a journey, but I would say you need a platform. That is why we talk about AI being a hybrid workload. Hybrid is hardware infrastructure too—on-prem and off-prem. OpsRamp can also observe outside your data center [into the public cloud]. That is a huge advantage too.
If you are an enterprise customer, you now have a complete console like I was showcasing yesterday on stage [at the Sphere] of the entire hybrid estate and agentic is applied to the entire hybrid estate.
You have added 250 new features over the last year and 1,000 changes to Aruba Networking Central. How big an investment is HPE making in networking going forward in terms of R&D, acquisitions and resources?
I did the Aruba acquisition 10 years ago. Since then, we have added both organically and inorganically to the Aruba platform. So organically obviously we built more features and functionality, particularly with the campus switching. We built a brand-new modern operating system. We expanded that platform from the campus and branch into the data center. We did that also through our partnership with Pensando. Some of our competitors came three years later with an intelligent switch. Three years ago, we were here when we announced that.
Then we invested in acquisitions that added to that. The three most important were: Silver Peak with SD-WAN [which was acquired in 2020]; Axis Security [in 2023] to build with Silver Peak SASE; and private 5G with Athonet [in 2023]. So those three are now part of the same architecture inside Aruba Central so we can provide ubiquitous connectivity including cellular, public through roaming agreements and private with private 5G. We wrap all of that with security, and now we have built this massive AIOps with agentic on top of the platform. Obviously, as you know, we are in the process of completing the acquisition of Juniper. That is another $14 billion investment.
Any update on the Juniper Networks acquisition? What is the message in terms of the potential that the acquisition could bring customers and partners?
Look, everybody I talk to wants this. This is pro-competitive. Our goal is to build the best networking business on the planet, and the best networking business on the planet will deliver a strong, modern, secure AI-driven alternative in this particular part of the stack—networking—from edge to cloud. That is our goal. Today is June 25. The trial starts on July 9, and we are very confident that we will prevail.
Has it been frustrating in terms of the amount of management time, expense and resources on this case?
Well, I’m frustrated because customers are being held back longer. The rest, to be honest with you, is part of the process. But obviously it is disappointing to go through this process when you think about how much this could add to the U.S. market in terms of competition and, second, how much this would enable the U.S. to compete outside the United States. Because, obviously, outside the United States there are more companies that participate in this market and some of those companies have a great amount of [market] share.
Look, we live in interesting times. But my job is to stay focused. The Aruba team has done a fantastic job. As you know, we have grown [Aruba] orders for three consecutive quarters, and last quarter we also grew revenues year over year because we now finally have gotten through the backlog post-COVID.
I have a fantastic team. We have a phenomenal lawyer that will lead this [case against the Department of Justice], and we are confident we can get through this.
What are you hearing from partners and customers on the HPE-Juniper acquisition?
Look, yesterday was a great day. Putting a keynote in that [Sphere] venue is always hard to do. I am proud of what the team has done. Obviously, we showed up differently with a new brand. It is a bold expression of who we have become over the last 10 years.
The partners and customers are impressed. One of the things they tell us they love and appreciate about HPE is our vision and strategy never changed. We called it right from the beginning [when I became CEO and said the enterprise of the future would be edge-centric, data-driven and hybrid]. I didn’t know AI would be part of data-driven, but the edge was right and hybrid cloud was absolutely spot on. And data-driven is right but with AI being the driving force going forward.
So we have all the pieces now, and obviously we are excited about the Juniper completion to really continue that journey. But as you saw both in the keynote and on the show floor it starts by laying the right foundation at the networking level. That networking fabric gives you the ability to deploy the right hybrid IT infrastructure. That enables you to deploy AI. When you go to the show floor, you see exactly the same thing. In the future they are going to see the Juniper parts of this [story] so they can see exactly how it manifests from the edge to the core to the data center and then how that gets embedded into the fabric of hybrid cloud and AI.
The Cloud Commit [cloud credits] program is a big change in how you can sell HPE storage, private cloud and software. How big an opportunity is that, and will partners be able to play there?
I think it is a huge opportunity. It goes back to the same principle when we said cloud is not a destination, it is an experience. The experience is not just the R&D. Being cloud-native is also the way you deploy and manage it. That is also part of the commercial [market experience]. So what we’re doing is bringing the same commercial experience when you decide to land infrastructure, workloads and data on-premises so you can consume it in the same way with these credits [as you do today in the public cloud].
For partners they can go in front of customers and say, ‘Look, we have almost the same program [as hyperscaler cloud providers]. If you decide the best space to land this is in the public cloud, you know what to do. But if you want to do it on-prem, we can do it exactly the same way.’
It’s wonderful now because we have Morpheus that allows you to manage the entire [IT] estate, whether it is on-prem or off-prem with that unified cloud operations model. So you have unified cloud operations as an operating model. We give you the same cloud experience now from a technical point of view on-prem. And now we give you the same commercial approach.
