Aruba Worldwide Sales Chief Alain Carpentier On Why HPE Has A Big AI Advantage Versus Cisco, Arista

Aruba’s senior vice president of worldwide sales says integrating the Aruba networking channel team into HPE’s global sales organization is poised to power a new era of AI and security growth for HPE partners.

Aruba Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales Alain Carpentier said integrating the Aruba channel networking team into HPE is priming the pump for an AI networking revolution in anticipation of HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks.

“We are building the foundation of a new wave of growth, which will be around AI and security,” said Carpentier in an interview with CRN on the new global networking go-to- market sales offensive. “That will be the foundation. And for that, we need partners. For a partner, they need to transform themselves. If they are not able to transform, then they have an issue. So we believe that this new channel organization will help push them to transform their model to capture these new opportunities around AI, network for AI as well as with security attached to that, and also AI for network.”

HPE said the integration of the HPE Aruba Networking channel team into the global sales organization will take effect Nov. 1, the start of HPE’s new fiscal year.

HPE said the unification will “strengthen” the company’s partner strategy and enable it to “simplify the engagement experience” across its broad edge-to-cloud portfolio without losing the focus on networking.

HPE has already received European Commission approval for the blockbuster deal for Juniper Networks, which is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025.

The acquisition doubles HPE’s networking business and sets up a battle for network supremacy in the AI era between a combined HPE, Aruba and Juniper and market leader Cisco Systems, which has dominated the networking market since the mid 1990s.

The acquisition sets up HPE to grab share in the network for AI market, building AI clusters that combine compute, storage and networking versus Cisco and Arista, said Carpentier, a 27-year HP and HPE veteran.

“It’s a big business that is coming,” he said of the AI cluster market. “It is difficult to evaluate the size, but we believe that if we’re able to provide one cluster end to end customers will be interested. That’s where we have a big differentiator versus competitors. If you compare that with Arista and Cisco, they can’t do that.”

HPE is also set to break open the AI for network market, which is aimed at leveraging AI to improve network automation, said Carpentier. He said some customers and partners are underestimating the impact AI will have on automating resolution of network issues.

“We see some customers very amazed by these concepts that we have introduced, and it works very well,” he said. “We simplify the way to manage the network so you have less people doing things they don’t need to do to manage their network.”

What does the integration of the Aruba channel networking team into HPE’s global sales organization mean for partners?

I was a part of this organization eight years ago when HPE acquired Aruba. At that time, we didn’t have critical mass to merge this business into the HPE business. So that was the reason we did a reverse integration, and we built the model from Aruba Central and we developed this business.

At the time of the acquisition, Aruba was a $1 billion business so with HPE networking it was a $2 billion business. Now, we are more than $5 billion. So we have the critical mass. The share of the profitability of the networking business inside HPE is crucial now.

If we are successful with the Juniper acquisition, then we double that critical mass.

I think the vision behind this is HPE is now a core networking organization, which is fundamental for the partners and the HPE sales force.

With AI coming we see some convergence between compute, storage and networking. When you build AI clusters you need networking, and you need to be able manage the data.

With the OpsRamp acquisiton, we have the ability to connect this new [AI management software] solution with the networking portfolio to provide more outcomes for our customers.

So the fact that we have put the teams together and the programs together will help the channel bridge the different views we have inside of HPE.

We want to be a challenger that takes market share.

Are you interested in recruiting Cisco partners?

So the answer to your question, ‘Are we interested in Cisco partners?’ Yes. Are we interested in security partners? Yes, because we see convergence of the networking industry between the network and the security side. So we are not only interested in Cisco partners, but we are also interested in Fortinet and Palo Alto [Networks] and Zscaler partners as well. We want to bring those partners into the new HPE ecosystem, and we want to simplify the experience. That’s our ultimate objective because at the end of the day if we do that we will be able to take market share not only from Cisco but also on the security side.

How big a reset and opportunity is there for partners with the AI revolution with the new architectural approach in networking versus Cisco, which has dominated enterprise networking for 30 years?

If you look at the market landscape today, there is a dominant Cisco. They are running around $25 billion only in the networking industry, which is huge.

On our side the No. 2 and No. 3 companies are in the range of $5 billion. So it’s a big gap, and it’s unique in the industry, by the way, because if you compare it with compute and storage and other types of IT, the maximum market share you have is 25 percent, but that is not the case in networking. So the fact that we can combine Juniper and Aruba is a game-changer because suddenly we double the business with very complementary solutions.

So for partners it’s a huge opportunity because for the Aruba partners they can add on to the portfolio, and we can push them to move into this AI business.

So when we say ‘AI,’ there are two big markets. There is network for AI. So as I explained before, that’s when you combine compute, storage and networking to help customers to build AI clusters for enterprise. It’s a big business that is coming. It is difficult to evaluate the size, but we believe that if we’re able to provide one cluster end to end customers will be interested. That’s where we have a big differentiator versus competitors. If you compare that with Arista and Cisco, they can’t do that. They have to play with another complete partner, which is not easy.

And then there is another market, which is AI for network, which is how you use AI to improve the automation for the networking domain, which could be campus and branch, but also data center. And I think with the combination of the software that we use today as an end platform from Aruba and the Mist platform that Juniper uses today this combination can help to position the best platform depending on what the customers want in different markets and different verticals.

Then we can bring in the security aspect of that with the SASE offer that we have built in the past two years. So that is the kind of combination of solutions we are bringing to market. It’s very difficult for me to give you the size of the market because these new domains are growing big time. Everybody has a lot of expectations, especially in AI domain. But I think we are building the foundation of a new wave of growth, which will be around AI and security. That will be the foundation. And for that, we need partners.

For a partner, they need to transform themselves. If they are not able to transform, then they have an issue. So we believe that this new channel organization will help push them to transform their model to capture these new opportunities around AI, network for AI as well as with security attached to that, and also AI for network. You have also AI for management with compute and storage as well that is coming from the [OpsRamp] acquisition.

We believe this combination is a new inflection point that will help us advance in this market and take a lot of market share. That's really the fundamental change that we want to operate with in the coming year.

Do you think customers and partners are underestimating the AI networking opportunity in terms of the automation and the ability to remediate with self-fixing networks?

You’re absolutely right. We need to understand the power of what we’re introducing to the market. And we see some customers very amazed by these concepts that we have introduced,and it works very well. We simplify the way to manage the network and have less people doing things they don’t need to do to manage their network.

That’s something we need to trigger and provide enablement to be sure that we have the right partner programs to push partners to communicate that toward the market.

How big an impact do you see from the OpsRamp integration into the networking market?

OpsRamp will help us to be agnostic in the market. We will be able to manage whatever the network you have today as a customer. We can manage this with the combination of OpRamp and the Aruba portfolio.

The fact that we have the OpsRamp solution with the full-suite observability with ability to manage [multivendor offerings] makes it a super powerful solution. The combination of what we can do with OpsRamp and networking is unique.

People have to understand that, and that’s why it’s important that first we enable the partners, and then they will enable the market. So it’s a journey.