After Juniper acquisition: HPE initially no discontinuation in network portfolio

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Following the acquisition of Juniper Networks by HPE, it has now become clear at the HPE Networking Innovation Days how the joint product portfolio will proceed. The two separate portfolios had unsettled some customers since the acquisition regarding the future-proofing of investments in HPE networking products. For example, for the bread-and-butter business in campus networks, the former Juniper portfolio includes the cloud network management offering Mist, while HPE Aruba offers Central, which can be operated on-premise or in the cloud. However, both switches and WLAN access points have not been cross-compatible so far.

In an interview with the iX editorial team, Lars Hartmann, Vice President Sales Central Europe, and Katja Herzog, Managing Director HPE Networking Germany, explained that no discontinuation of either platform is planned for the next five years. Both are to be operated in parallel for the time being.

Path for Management Platforms

According to HPE Networking, both Mist and Central are based on a microservice architecture. Therefore, functions are to be successively integrated into the respective other platform as microservices, so that in the end, near feature parity will be available. This may entail higher costs for a transitional period, but it should represent a valid path for customers. Ultimately, everything will likely converge into a single platform.

For the interim multi-platform strategy, HPE is also releasing a series of WLAN access points called AP-72XH (AP-721H, AP-723H, and AP-725H), which are compatible with both platforms. However, only the AP-723H is currently available. At the same time, in the next step, Juniper's EX switches are to be integrated into Central.

AOS-CX Series to Play No Role in Data Center Soon

In the campus network, the path is thus clearer than shortly after the acquisition. At the same time, Juniper has brought the Apstra product for managing data center networks. It serves as an intent-based management tool throughout the entire lifecycle and offers APIs and integrations into automation frameworks such as Terraform and Ansible. Furthermore, Apstra is multi-vendor capable and can manage switches from Cisco and Arista, for example, in addition to Juniper. However, HPE Aruba AOS-CX switches remain excluded, and there are currently no concrete roadmaps indicating any change in this regard.

AOS-CX data center switches can currently be centrally administered via the Aruba Fabric Composer (AFC), with these functionalities to be successively migrated to Central. In any case, these switches are only aimed at customers with smaller data centers. Juniper's QFX data center switch series, on the other hand, can cover all data center sizes. This suggests that QFX with Apstra as the management platform will be favored in the future, and the AOS-CX series will no longer play a role in the data center environment in the long term.

New Firewall Portfolio for HPE

Through the Juniper acquisition, HPE has also incorporated the SRX firewall portfolio. This is now being expanded with the SRX-4XX series, which is suitable for branch offices or smaller locations but contains the full feature set of SRX. SRX 400 and 440 are expected to be available this year.

iX was able to examine a pre-release of the SRX 400, which features 8 x 1G copper ports, two of which offer PoE+ support. Additionally, it provides two SFP slots. All ports support MACsec encryption, Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, and can be managed via Mist, Security Director, or CLI.

According to HPE's presentation, the 400 model has an L3/L4 throughput of 1.2 Gbit/s and an L7 throughput of 0.9 Gbit/s. The SRX 440 has the same physical ports but offers higher L3/L4 throughput of 1.75 Gbit/s and L7 throughput of up to 1.25 Gbit/s. In terms of performance, these models are likely to appeal to many classic HPE Aruba customers, allowing HPE to serve as a “one-stop-shop” in networking for switching, routing, and firewall functions.

(mack)