Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced plans to acquire SD-WAN pacesetter Silver Peak in a transaction valued at $925 million. When the move is complete, Silver Peak will become part of Aruba, building on a portfolio that offers secure networking to campus, branch, data centre and remote worker environments.
HPE has said the move will accelerate cloud transformation for enterprises with a solution that covers wired, wireless LAN and wide area networking connectivity. It added that Silver Peak’s ‘self-drive’ SD-WAN offer is a good fit with Aruba’s work from home and branch office solutions.
“HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “With this acquisition we are accelerating our edge-to-cloud strategy to provide a true distributed cloud model and cloud experience for all apps and data wherever they live. Silver Peak’s innovative team and technology bring critical capabilities that will help our customers modernize and transform their networks to securely connect any edge to any cloud.”
“Today’s announcement comes at a unique moment for our customers, who are grappling with business recovery in the wake of the pandemic,” added Keerti Melkote, president of Intelligent Edge for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and founder of Aruba Networks. “The need for edge-to-cloud architectures has never been more relevant as enterprises look to extend connectivity to branch locations and enable secure work-from-home experiences.”
Analysts are largely agreed that SD-WAN has proved to be an important differentiator for its adopters during the COVID pandemic, and that it is set to play an important role in the years ahead with the deployment of 5G by enterprises.
“I believe SD-WAN could be an enabler for 5G into the enterprise,” said Brandon Butler, Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks, IDC, speaking at a recent NetEvents round table on the subject. “Specifically, I think it could represent a cost optimization compared to MPLS.”
By Guy Matthews, Editor of NetReporter
