The US Department of Justice has finally given the green light to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, seen by many in the industry as creating a bigger and more able competitor to Cisco in the network connectivity space.
Juniper Networks partners will now become HPE partners, with the latter company having to share some of Juniper’s MIST AIOps connectivity source code with two other entities in the US market – a request by the DoJ to get the deal approved.
“Our agreement with the DOJ paves the way to close HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks and preserves the intended benefits of this deal for our customers and shareholders, while creating greater competition in the global networking market,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “For the first time, customers will now have a modern network architecture alternative that can best support the demands of AI workloads.”
He added: “The combination of HPE Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks will provide customers with a comprehensive portfolio of secure, AI-native networking solutions, and accelerate HPE’s ability to grow in the AI data centre, service provider and cloud segments.”
“This marks an exciting step forward in delivering on a critical customer need – a complete portfolio of modern, secure networking solutions to connect their organisations and provide essential foundations for hybrid cloud and AI,” added Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim. “We look forward to closing this transaction and turning our shared vision into reality for enterprise, service provider and cloud customers."
On 9 January, 2024, HPE announced its agreement to acquire Juniper in an all-cash transaction for $40.00 per share, representing an equity value of approximately $14 billion.
To get the deal over the line, HPE has also agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business, in addition to facilitating “limited access” to Juniper's advanced Mist AIOps technology, through an auction of interested parties.
As well as Cisco facing stiffer competition in the global networking connectivity market, the new combo will also potentially be a strong player against Huawei in some markets.
With HPE and Juniper now one company, partners of both will now be waiting for a new combined partner programme.
