‘We have the best solutions with Juniper Mist and the Aruba solutions.’ said HPE Networking’s Jeff Aaron. ‘There’s a huge inflection point right now with Wi-Fi 7 and even Wi-Fi 8. Cisco is no longer a leader in the [Gartner] Magic Quadrant. The proverbial leader is weak. So Wi-Fi is a huge opportunity.’
HPE Networking Vice President of Products and Solutions Jeff Aaron says the combined Aruba and Juniper Mist portfolio gives the AI networking powerhouse the muscle to displace Cisco Systems as the No. 1 wireless networking provider.
“We feel that we can be No. 1 in wireless,” said Aaron in an interview with CRN. “We have the best solutions with Juniper Mist and the Aruba solutions. There’s a huge inflection point right now with Wi-Fi 7 and even Wi-Fi 8. Cisco is no longer a leader in the [Gartner] Magic Quadrant. The proverbial leader is weak. So Wi-Fi is a huge opportunity.”
Cisco declined to comment.
The throwdown comes as HPE releases the first combined Juniper and Aruba networking products since it acquired Juniper Networks for $13.4 billion five months ago.
Among the new products unveiled at HPE Discover Barcelona Wednesday are a new Juniper Aruba dual platform Wi-Fi 7 Access Point that will be delivered in the third quarter of next year.
HPE is also introducing a new AI data center switch, HPE Juniper Networking QFX5250, that it is touting as the “world’s highest- performance Ultra Ethernet Transport Ready” network switch.
In the second-quarter worldwide WLAN tracker, market researcher IDC said Cisco was No. 1, accounting for 37.8 percent of the market with HPE Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks together accounting for 19.7 percent market share.
The stepped-up HPE-Juniper challenge to Cisco comes even as the Magic Quadrant released earlier this year by market researcher Gartner named Juniper and HPE as Leaders and dropped Cisco into the Challenger quadrant.
Cisco is also still in the process of unifying its entire Catalyst and Meraki portfolio into a coherent offering, which is creating challenges for customers as their needs evolve, Gartner said.
Aaron, for his part, said other vendors have struggled to bring “multiple platforms” together, and HPE is moving fast to deliver “better value” to customers.
“We’ve done more in six months than that other guy up the road in Silicon Valley has done in 13 years to actually unify the vision and unify the cloud and AI,” said Aaron, referring to Cisco. “That means a lot to partners. It’s better cross-selling. It’s better value. It’s better troubleshooting. That’s what we’re delivering, and that’s what makes this so exciting.”
Aaron said he sees the new HPE Juniper portfolio as a “perfect storm” that heralds the convergence of networking and AI.
“HPE has all the solutions now to take advantage of that,” he said. “So we’re going to go off and do it. [HPE] Discover [Barcelona] is the “coming out party.” But what is in store in 2026 is going to be so much fun to do. It’s exciting.”
Here is more of CRN’s conversation with Aaron.
How big is the moment now that HPE has delivered the first combined HPE Aruba and Juniper networking products?
The single biggest thing for the partners with bringing the Juniper and the HPE acquisition together is more choice. You had HPE partners that didn’t necessarily have the full data center solution or routing infrastructure solution. You had Juniper partners that didn’t necessarily have the full SD-WAN and campus and branch. You obviously have a robust set of installed bases on both sides. So the message isn’t changing. Now there is even more choice for partners. And we’ve just made it even easier.
No matter what their actual customers and end users need, whichever platform they’re on, we’re going to get them to the promised land of a self-driving network. That’s the message here: No one is being left behind. We’re going to continue to evolve both platforms, innovate on both while at the same time cross- pollinating the two.
Ultimately, the goal is a common self-driving [network] experience. That’s what we’re going to deliver. Our partners can go to customers, whether they want on-prem or in the cloud, it doesn’t matter. They have the solutions to go sell and win.
How big is the data center opportunity with the new switch and the new edge router you are bringing to market?
This new announcement is specifically to go after AI data centers. That’s an absolutely enormous TAM [total addressable market]. And so now they have the industry’s first [Broadcom] Tomahawk 6 OEM switch out there. They have even more routers to go after emphasized use cases. With these partnerships [with Nvidia and AMD]there’s more validation there.
We always had a phenomenal solution for networking for AI. Now we’re just making it that much better.
What’s the biggest differentiator between Cisco and HPE now that you have the full stack from the edge to the data center?
From a networking standpoint, we’ve been doubling down on the notion of the secure AI-native network, which brings both Aruba and Juniper together.
That basically has three pillars that differentiate us. The first is it’s AI-native with AIOps. We’ve been doing this longer [than competitors]. We have a mature Data Lake. We have higher efficacy. We have more feature sets than anyone in the industry, which ultimately leads to better results.
Secondly, it’s the integral security—so the fact that the routers and the switches and the firewalls all participate together. You bring in some of the SSE [Security Service Edge] and the NAC [Network Access Control]. That’s a huge differentiator, and the last is just the full breadth of the portfolio coming together under a common AI and cloud.
Other vendors have struggled to bring multiple platforms together. As we have showed, we have a vision. We are executing on it. We’ve done more in six months than that other guy up the road in Silicon Valley has done in 13 years to actually unify the vision and unify the cloud and the AI. That means a lot to partners. It’s better cross-selling. It’s better value. It’s better troubleshooting. That’s what we’re delivering, and that’s what makes this so exciting.
How important is the move here to unleash Juniper Mist and make it available on HPE Networking Central?
I think it’s worth pointing out this is cross-pollinating. It’s not just bringing Mist to Central. It’s also bringing Central to Mist.
The notion is that neither platform is going away. There are customer commitments. We’re going to stand behind them. Neither is going away. But the goal is that each is going to innovate and grow toward a common self-driving experience.
So if you’re on Central, you’re going to have a road map that’s going to say, ‘Here’s what you’re going to get, and it really shouldn’t matter if it’s coming from Mist or it is brand new. Here is what you are going to get. The same thing on the Mist side.
Eventually, they’re going to be common experiences. That’s the endgame there. But the fact that both platforms are industry leaders for agentic AI and for microservices just made it that much easier to be able to both cross-pollinate and also create a model where we can build once and deploy twice.
It’s like LinkedIn. LinkedIn works on Android. It works on iPhone. But you get the same LinkedIn experience. That’s what we want to develop here. No matter what platform you’re on, we want to get you that common experience, which will ultimately lead to fewer trouble tickets. It ultimately leads to fewer truck rolls, lower OpEx. That’s what this is all about for our partners and our end users.
What are the top three sales opportunities out of the gate for partners?
No. 1 is we feel that we can be No. 1 in wireless. We have the best solutions with Juniper Mist and the Aruba solutions.
There’s a huge inflection point right now with Wi-Fi 7 and even Wi-Fi 8. Cisco is no longer a leader in the [Gartner] Magic Quadrant. The proverbial leader is weak. So Wi-Fi is a huge opportunity.
Then there is the upsell that comes with that. Obviously, if you need more Wi-Fi you’ve got to get more wired to power those access points. So that’s No. 1.
The second thing as we just talked about is AI data centers. The TAM for that is absolutely enormous. There are few if any vendors that have the full networking portfolio with routers, switches, firewalls, etc. and then you combine that with the compute, storage and hybrid cloud with the rest of HPE. Who can stack up with that?
The last one is security, primarily around SASE. We have a phenomenal solution when it comes to our SD-WAN. You combine that with our SSE and when you start to bring in some of the AIOps capabilities, that again is another opportunity for us to go out and ultimately show this vision of also bringing SASE using ZTNA [Zero Trust Network Access] where, again, we have a very unique ability to do that. We also bring in NAC and some of those other capabilities we have like firewalls.
Those are the three areas that we’re primarily aligning marketing efforts around to train our partners and go after that because there’s definitely a huge opportunity there.
What’s the mood as you bring this to market at HPE Discover Barcelona?
We’ve been meeting with partners and meeting with customers. We’ve been doing advisory boards. We’ve been out there. It is very palatable. It is very tangible.
It’s a perfect storm. The industry is ready for a convergence of networking and AI. HPE has all the solutions now to take advantage of that. So we’re going to go off and do it. [HPE] Discover [Barcelona] is the coming out party. But what is in store in 2026 is going to be so much fun to do. It’s exciting.
How fast is this HPE Networking business moving?
I don’t have a reference point at HPE, but I can tell you I was at Mist when it was acquired by Juniper and at Juniper when it was acquired by HPE. It is moving extremely fast and that’s because under [HPE Networking President and General Manager] Rami [Rahim]it is one team and one vision. We already have all the sub-BU [business unit] leaders in place. We have all the sales leaders in place. We have all the marketing leaders in place. We’ve made it very clear that all these solutions should be driving or rowing together toward a common self-driving network vision.
We also said, ‘Look, we’re not going to wait 13 years to bring these solutions together. We’re going to do both expeditiously and judiciously so no customers are left behind.’
So it’s been insane. It’s been crazy. The other thing I will point out is that, as I said, Juniper had a successful acquisition of Mist. HPE had a successful acquisition of Aruba.
So collectively this isn’t our first rodeo. I think the goal is to take the learnings of some of that plus Silver Peak and some of these other acquisitions and applying that too. So I think that’s what’s making this come off so effective so far.
It seems like the decisions were made really quickly with the cross-pollination. How do you account for that?
It’s one vision. The way Rami (pictured) has it broken out is he has BU leaders. So Sujai Hajela runs campus and branch. And Praveen Jain runs data center networking.
The cross-pollination specifically was under Sujai. That was his platform and domain. The QFX5250 [network switch] is under Praveen. So obviously Rami has strong leaders underneath him that are driving their own businesses, but it helps to have a steady, firm hand in Rami that’s driving that vision and giving clear direction. That’s just a testament to his leadership.
What are you seeing among customers deciding on a new network architecture for AI?
When you look at AI for networking, if we do our job right you shouldn’t even know that there’s AI in there. We are building a better networking platform. It’s better wireless. It’s better SD-WAN. It happens to be self-driving. The fact that we’re using AI, ML [machine learning] or doing all these things should really be impervious to the partner and the end user.
Every one of the vendors recognizes they have to use AIOps better and integrate it. It just so happens that HPE Juniper has a strong, strong, strong lead there.
Networking for AI is different because everyone’s deploying AI for various use cases. They’re building out their LLMs based upon their needs.
So they need a network that works. So the GPUs need to talk with each other within a data center, between data centers and to the edge.
It’s a fact of life. You need a network that is purpose-built with AI and for AI, and we deliver both for you.
What is the key for partners to be successful selling the combined Aruba Juniper networking portfolio?
Our focus has been to fast-track Juniper partners onto the HPE system so they can go sell. Then we want to make sure the HPE partners are enabled and educated on how to go sell the broader solution. And there are programs to help that.
That’s what we are focusing on right now. The partners are the path forward. That is a big reason why this acquisition went through: combining the technology Juniper has with the amazing partners HPE has. That is how we get scale. That is why this is so exciting right now.