5G Factor: HPE Juniper Deal – The 5G Ecosystem Impact

An Assessment of Key 5G-IoT Ecosystem Developments with a Focus on the HPE $14 Billion Acquisition of Juniper and Its Ecosystem-wide Impact

In this episode of The 5G Factor, our series that focuses on all things 5G, the IoT, and the ecosystem as a whole, The Futurum Group's Ron Westfall is joined by colleague and fellow analyst, Steven Dickens, for a look at the top 5G developments and what's going on that caught our eye with a laser focus on HPE's game changing $14 billion acquisition of Juniper and why it represents an important inflection point in the industry that can redefine how the 5G ecosystem connects, protects, and analyzes data.

Their conversation focused on:

Overall 5G Ecosystem Impact. The Juniper acquisition is expected to double HPE's networking business, creating a new more formidable networking player with a broader, diversified portfolio that can present customers and partners with a compelling choice to drive business value. The explosion of AI and hybrid cloud-driven business is accelerating demand for secure, unified technology solutions that connect, protect, and analyze the data of organizations from edge to cloud. They assess why they see that combining HPE and Juniper's complementary portfolios can further energize HPE's edge-to-cloud strategy with an ability to lead in an AI-native environment based on a foundational cloud-native architecture. Together, HPE and Juniper can provide customers of all sizes with a complete, secure portfolio that enables the networking architecture necessary to manage and simplify their expanding and increasingly intricate connectivity needs, including certainly 5G. 

5G CSP Impact. With the deal, HPE and Juniper anticipate that the benefits extend equally to both communication service provider (CSP) and cloud provide customers, which are very core to Juniper's existing business. Across the CSP ecosystem organizations are building data centers – distributed data centers, centralized data centers. As a result, HPE can build comprehensive data center solutions with complete automation and AI capabilities, extending throughout the CSP segment. For example, we examine how Juniper's RIC and HPE RAN Automation software can bring intelligence and programmability to RAN by enabling third-party applications that can improve service experience, reduce costs, and deliver new business models, especially AI-infused ones. Also, they review how HPE GreenLake and the Juniper Cloud Metro multiservice architecture can deliver assured user experiences across distributed cloud services. Using network slicing, service-aware technologies, and cloud-scale capabilities, CSPs can become better able fulfill user expectations for every service while eliminating the costs and complexity of siloed metro operations. 

5G Enterprise Impact: The HPE Aruba and Juniper's Juniper Access Points alongside Juniper Mist Cloud and Mist AI are already widely deployed throughout global Wi-Fi implementations. Plus, with Athonet private wireless assets, HPE and Juniper are strongly positioned to bring private 5G and Wi-Fi together to augment and innovate enterprise connectivity including using HPE GreenLake's edge compute and security/SASE portfolio assets. They explore why HPE attains the portfolio foundation to strongly influence 5G enterprise evolution, including driving private 5G and WiFi services and capabilities, as well as mixed network scenarios, according to enterprise customer priorities.