They’ve been trying to compete in the controller-less WiFi market for a while and it’s not going well. Tons of larger (higher ed, which have complex environments with very many end points) campuses have tried to move to Aruba Central, and subsequently moved back because it isn’t working well.
And there’s huge operational benefits to Mist’s architecture even if you leave out the AI part. My best guess for why Aruba hasn’t been able to replicate at least the architecture is that they’re carrying around too much legacy they can’t break with to make this feasible.
Since they’re nearly explicitly saying “we are buying Juniper for Mist”, and at least in my opinion aren’t doing that only for further developing that portfolio towards the data center, I guess they’ve just decided to buy someone who was able to execute on that architecture shift.
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Guys wake up !! Juniper lost the battle with Cisco long ago.
HPE networking is no where close to Cisco.
MIST has only 4-5% of WLAN market. Do you think that all Cisco customers will ditch Cisco and jump to MIST just because of this merger?
Cisco has developed a lot of features based on GNSS and other new AI technologies. They are not far behind. In fact, they are the one of the leaders in wireless.
Cisco will pounce on many existing Aruba customers and move them to Cisxo meraki !
Never seen the words successful execution about Juniper. The biggest failure in the Network market. Good luck to all my ex colleagues, with better management it could have been so good
@ad
You're spot on. However, there is one caveat here...
HPE wants Mist for Wi-Fi. The issue is that the DOJ allowed this only because they are opening up the code for the AP's.(NOT to be confused with the source cloud code) Meaning, Mist will devalue here. For example, no more will HPE have mist that does probability surfaces while everyone else does triangulation. Now everyone will see how the probability surface works and can imitate it. That is just one example of many. Thats why DOJ retreated so fast is because HPE gave up too easy. Mist having a competitive advantage in future is gone.
I also expect them to shed many products, which is why the layoff expectation at HPE seems high. They don't know how to use Juniper technology. They didn't just buy Juniper only to get rid of everything.
I have a feeling this will happen:
- Sell off EX line switches.
- Sell Apstra or make apstra soly apart of Mist and rebrand it.
- Eliminate the entry level SRX's as they are pointless anyway.
Then after that, let the arguing between teams begin on "why we should keep this over that".
@ad something else you don't know I guess? Datacenter ?
Looks like layoffs could be expected at HPE in the near future? https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amandagoodall_hpes-14-billion-juniper-deal-is-basically-activity-7344967354772004864-FFAl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACLn7u0BnFUKhjGcYPnw_E7lacvWt8AgE1w
https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/2025/doj-has-final-say-over-who-buys-juniper-s-ai-ops-for-mist
Dude, HPE only wanted Juniper just for Mist wifi. What else does Juniper have besides Mist would HPE want?