HPE to Boost SD-WAN Expertise With Silver Peak Acquisition
WAN specialist will be combined with Aruba Networks business to expand capabilities in the cloud and at the edge
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is buying Silver Peak, making it the latest top-tier vendor to bolster its software-defined WAN capabilities and expand its presence in the cloud and at the edge by acquiring players in the SD-WAN space.
The Lowdown: The enterprise tech giant announced the deal Monday, saying that Silver Peak will be folded into the company’s Aruba Networks business, which has become the tip of the spear for HPE’s efforts at the edge and home for its networking efforts.
The Details: The cash deal is worth about $925 million and is expected to close by September.
SD-WAN has become a key tool for organizations as they adopt the cloud and look to grow their edge strategies. Enterprises struggling to manage the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and a highly distributed workforce are looking for modern networking technologies that ease access to applications and data in the cloud and at the edge as well as central data centers. That need has only been amplified since the COVID-19 pandemic as many employees are now working from home.
HPE has been focused on the edge for several years, announcing in 2018 plans to spend $4 billion over four years on what it calls the Intelligent Edge. Aruba has been central to the initiative with its Edge Service Platform. HPE plans to combine Silver Peak’s SD-WAN technology with Aruba’s SD-Branch solutions to simplify branch office and WAN deployments for remote workforces and cloud-connected distributed enterprises.
The Impact: The cloud and the edge – including SD-WAN deployments – will continue to be a significant opportunity for channel partners as they help clients adapt to the rapidly changing IT and business environments. The addition of Silver Peak technology and its 1,500 customers worldwide into the HPE fold will give partners more options to offer customers.
The vendor cited 650 Group forecasts that call for the SD-WAN market to grow from $2.3 billion this year to $4.9 billion by 2024, with a yearly growth average of more than 20.5%.
Background: Silver Peak, founded in 2004 and based in Santa Clara, California, offers a range of products for both enterprises and service providers, including its Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform for physical or virtual environments. It provides always-available application performance across multiple transport modes. In addition, its Unity Orchestrator is aimed at application quality of service and security and its Unity Boost targets WAN optimization.
The deal is in line with other top vendors that are growing their SD-WAN expertise through acquisitions. Those include Cisco, which bought Viptela in 2017, VMware, which scooped up VeloCloud the same year and expanded its efforts through Nyansa deal this year, and, most recently, Palo Alto Networks buying CloudGenix in April.
The Buzz: “HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world,” HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri said. “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,” said Keerti Melkote, president of intelligent edge for HPE and founder of Aruba. “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. Silver Peak’s technology transforms legacy WAN architectures to self-driving WANs, which is a perfect fit with Aruba’s cloud-native, AI-driven Edge Services Platform. Together, we will be able to meet these needs with critical connectivity, security, and AI capabilities to drive the next generation of Edge-to-Cloud transformation.”
“Bringing together Silver Peak’s advanced SD-WAN solutions with Aruba’s industry-leading networking portfolio provides an unprecedented opportunity to deliver a comprehensive business-driven solutions to our customers,” said David Hughes, founder and CEO of Silver Peak. “The Silver Peak and Aruba teams share a common vision and goal to provide simplicity, scalability, and application-awareness at the edge. With Aruba’s extensive go-to-market, we will further accelerate our ability to drive faster adoption of these transformational technologies.”
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