Last week, I read a piece about HPE Discover by Enrico Signoretti. It did not paint a pretty picture for HPE’s future, relegating them to replying on a shrinking legacy server revenue stream, with an upcoming products already out of step with industry trends. I wrote a reaction hot take to it, asking if they were the horsewhip manufacturers of our time.
Tom Hollingsworth gives another look at HPE Discover, focusing on the company’s networking offerings. It’s a decidedly rosier picture. Since their Aruba acquisition (as opposed to their Arista partnership, a source of confusion), Tom sees their product line very distinctly segregated based on enterprise need.
For the old legacy systems, HPE’s FlexFabric should provide a stable market, as legacy needs aren’t going anywhere fast. This may be a maintenance-only project for the company, but will remain important to their portfolio. Meanwhile their Altoline products, running on OpenSwitch, are the Baby Bear of their portfolio, neither as complex as FlexFabric, or as programmable as their Arista-partnered products. Enrico was less than bullish on these, but Tom saw some interesting use cases, including using them as an out-of-band monitoring solution.
Finally, their Arista partnered products are all about being cloud ready. The company is pitching them as perfect for companies looking to either move to the cloud, or a hybrid solution. But Tom’s biggest question on this isn’t whether this is a good strategy, but when does HPE’s Arista partnership almost force them to make it an all out acquisition. It only makes sense given where the products fall on their roadmap.
The Networking Nerd comments:
I had the chance to attend HPE Discover last week by invitation from their influencer team. I wanted to see how HPE Networking had been getting along since the acquisition of Aruba Networks last year. There have been some moves and changes, including a new partnership with Arista Networks announced in September. What follows is my analysis of HPE’s Networking portfolio after HPE Discover London and where they are headed in the future.
Read more at: HPE Networking: Past, Present, and Future
