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DoJ Blocks HPE Juniper Deal | The Gestalt IT Rundown: February 5, 2025

We heard the rumors back in November that the HPE deal to acquired Juniper Networks was getting a closer look from the Department of Justice. Last week we got confirmation that the DoJ will be filing suit to half the deal. The arugument from the government is that the result of the deal would be 70% of the market for networking equipment being held by just two companies. Specifically cited was the wireless LAN component, where the DoJ said there were only three major players. This was refuted quickly by both HPE and Juniper. The UK Competition and Markets authority and the EU have both cleared the deal. This and more on The Rundown.

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1:10 – Intel Not Bringing Falcon Shores GPU to Market

During Intel’s Q4 2024 earnings call it was announced that they will not be releasing their current generation GPU, code named Falcon Shores. The project has been in development for over three years and industry analysts have lamented that the chip maker has fallen behind the competition. Falcon Shores was supposed to be the entry point for Intel to claw their way into the AI GPU accelerator market. According to Six Five Live hosts Daniel Newman and Pat Moorhead, Falcon Shores was Intel’s last chance to make a splash in the market given the struggles that the giant has faced over the past twelve months.

Read More: Intel Falcon Shores GPU Not Coming to Market in an AI Hit


3:52 – NVIDIA Accelerates Storage Networking

It’s the return of storage networking. NVIDIA had a big announcement this week about using Spectrum-X to speed up the data storage fabric. One of the key features is using adaptive routing to prevent flow collisions and route around congestion in the storage infrastructure. If you’re worried about the data bits arriving out-of-order, have no fear. NVIDIA Bluefield-3 SuperNICs can hold onto those pieces and reassemble them for proper presentation to the host system without impacting performance. Spectrum-X is the Ethernet solution that allows for RDMA traffic to be sent via RoCE v2. Testing of the newest features increased read performance up to 48% and write bandwidth by up to 41%.

Read More: Nvidia says Spectrum-X adaptive routing can boost storage fabric bandwidth

Read More: Accelerating AI Storage by up to 48% with NVIDIA Spectrum-X Networking Platform and Partners


7:42 – Phishing attacks against Microsoft ADFS

Looks like some hackers got their phishing license early this year. The target is Microsoft’s legacy Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS), which is an SSO solution that allows one set of credentials to authenticate across multiple environments. Given this story invovles phishing, guess how they’re using it? Did you say spoofed login pages? How about tricks for two-factor codes? You’re right! The attacks use very well crafted emails and link obfuscation to snare even the most diligent workers. According to researchers at Abnormal Security, the targets for these attacks appear to be in the education sector.

Read More: A new phishing campaign is exploiting Microsoft’s legacy ADFS identity solution to steal credentials and bypass MFA


11:31 – Ventev Acquired by Hubbell Inc

Yesterday news broke that Ventev is being acquired by Hubbell Incorporated of Deleware. Ventev, a major manufacturer of wireless antennas and mobile technology, was formerly a part of Tessco. Hubbell has a large range of technologies for enteprise IT. Ventev is expected to continue their focus under the new organization.


14:25 – AI and Cloud costs are driving a closer look at FinOps tools

Strangely, the majority of respondents to an Apptio survey are expecting an increased IT budget but unsurprisingly demand for new services are outstripping any budget increase. The combination of unpredicatable cloud costs, huge AI build-out costs, and a host of legacy hardware and software costs present a big maanagement headache. This seems to be a data problem and ideal for a software based solution, is FinOps about to get hot?

Read More: Tech execs grapple with budget sinkholes as AI drives up spend


17:33 – Microsoft Stops TPM Bypass for Win11 Installs

One of the challenges for installing Windows 11 has been the requirement for a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 chip in the system. Microsoft had previously provided guidance on how to get around this particular hiccup in their official installation documentation. Several other developers have even created tools to bypass the TPM check. However, this week Microsoft has decided that everyone needs to play by the rules. Microsoft has removed the guide to bypassing the TPM check from online sources and Windows Defender now flags the popular FlyBy11 TPM tool as malware. Users on Windows 10 must now decide if they want to buy a new system with a compatible TPM or let their OS fall out of support toward the end of 2025.

Read More: Microsoft is cracking down on people upgrading to Windows 11 on unsupported hardware


22:16 – DoJ Blocks HPE Juniper Deal

We heard the rumors back in November that the HPE deal to acquired Juniper Networks was getting a closer look from the Department of Justice. Last week we got confirmation that the DoJ will be filing suit to half the deal. The arugument from the government is that the result of the deal would be 70% of the market for networking equipment being held by just two companies. Specifically cited was the wireless LAN component, where the DoJ said there were only three major players. This was refuted quickly by both HPE and Juniper. The UK Competition and Markets authority and the EU have both cleared the deal.

Read More: US DOJ sues to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion Juniper deal


31:22 – The Weeks Ahead

Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14

Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20

Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20


Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.

The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.

About the author

Tom Hollingsworth

Tom Hollingsworth is a networking professional, blogger, and speaker on advanced technology topics. He is also an organizer for networking and wireless for Tech Field Day.  His blog can be found at https://networkingnerd.net/

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