HPE Aruba deepens network security and OpsRamp visibility
A new 'digital circuit breaker' capability for HPE Private Clouds, increased visibility of third-party hardware with OpsRamp and new SASE capabilities arrive for HPE Aruba.
New updates released today for HPE's Aruba networking platform increase security, automate policy management and expand connectivity with third-party hardware through OpsRamp.
The updates, released Tuesday, enable HPE to lay the foundation for new AI technology stacks, primarily for hardware visibility, according to networking industry analysts.
For example, Aruba can now connect disparate pieces of HPE's catalogue, said Jim Frey, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, now part of Omdia.
Enterprise networks with diverse hardware environments, a common challenge in most edge locations, stand to benefit the most from the OpsRamp integration, Frey said.
"HPE is being very deliberate about this and tying the product lines together," he said. "This is a much more functional [Aruba] solution."
The IT infrastructure titan has grand ambitions in the networking industry this year, with the planned acquisition of competitor Juniper Networks for $14 billion. HPE expects to complete the acquisition before the end of the calendar year, despite a lawsuit from the Department of Justice (DOJ).
During a quarterly earnings call last month, HPE CEO Antonio Neri said a trial date has been set for July 9 and added that he anticipates successfully defending the deal.
"The DOJ's analysis of the market is fundamentally flawed," Neri said on the call. "We strongly believe this transaction will positively change the dynamics in the networking market by enhancing competition. We believe we have a compelling case, and expect to be able to close the transaction before the end of fiscal 2025."
New visibility
HPE Aruba Networking Central, the platform's hybrid cloud management console, now has built-in third-party networking hardware visibility through OpsRamp technology. Supported third-party appliances include Cisco Systems, Arista and Juniper Networks.
Aruba Networking Central's policy manager now includes more granular access policy creation, including application-to-role, role-to-subnet and role-to-role polices, according to the company.
Managing diverse networking hardware across data centers and edge locations remains a challenge for customers that may use numerous vendors, said Mike Leibovitz, an analyst at Gartner.
"It's hard to manage third-party infrastructure from the cloud," Leibovitz said. "You need something that proxies [its data] to the cloud."
OpsRamp, an AIOps specialist acquired by HPE two years ago, provides the technology for the visibility. It also helps prepare the company for its possible purchase of Juniper and that vendor's stack in the future, he said.
Aruba Networking Central's policy manager now also includes more granular access policy creation, including application-to-role, role-to-subnet and role-to-role polices. The Aruba Networking Security Service Edge, the Aruba security management console, now offers mesh connectivity for enterprise points of presence to maintain network traffic flow and uptime, the company said.
Cloud and network security are also taking center stage with updates to HPE's private cloud offerings in the GreenLake platform-as-a-service offering.
New Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) cloud architectures for the HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD-WAN appliances enable better connectivity with the HPE Aruba Networking Security Service Edge management console. Aruba customers will also have access to a new adaptive DDoS defense capability that uses machine learning analytics to automatically throttle attacks without admin intervention.
HPE Private Cloud Enterprise, HPE's private cloud as-a-service offering in the GreenLake service catalog, now includes a "digital circuit breaker" technology to counter threats. HPE claims that this capability temporarily disconnects the public internet from services, applications or hardware when a threat is detected and automatically reconnects after admins give the all-clear.
Private Cloud Enterprise also supports air-gapped cloud management services, enabling customers in regulated industries to manage an on-prem network using cloud-like tools without an external internet connection.
Almost anyone you talk to says GenAI will be a much heavier [network traffic] lift than anything before.
Jim FreyAnalyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
"Almost anyone you talk to says GenAI will be a much heavier [network traffic] lift than anything before," Frey said.
AI workloads will need more telemetry services to track access to more centralized AI resources, like edge data feeding into retrieval-augment generation processes for AI, generating traffic logs and maintaining speeding GPU-to-GPU communications, according to Leibovitz.
Juniper's feature set would likely complement or fill gaps in Aruba's capabilities, as Juniper specializes in AI workloads while Aruba handles more traditional data center demands, he said.
"[HPE] is trying to become a bigger player in the networking space, but Juniper has some features that Aruba doesn't," Lebovitz said.
Despite the misgivings from the DOJ about the Juniper acquisition leading to a less competitive market, a combined HPE and Juniper would still trail the total market share of Cisco, according to Frey.
"There are competitors they're still trailing," he said. "It's going to be a constant head-to-head battle to differentiate."
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for Informa TechTarget covering cloud and data storage.
