The industry is still digesting HPE’s $14 billion acquisition bid for Juniper Networks. One big question is what HPE will do once it owns two wireless networking products: the popular and widely deployed Aruba, and the AI-powered and market-grabbing Mist.
I reached out to the Dell’Oro Group to get some market share numbers on each product to help inform my analysis. I spoke with Siân Morgan, who heads up Dell’Oro’s research into the Wireless LAN, campus NaaS, and Public-Cloud Managed LAN areas. She also posted a blog with her analysis of the acquisition.
Market Share
For the first three quarters of 2023, which is the most recent data available, HPE Aruba has three times the market share of revenue compared to Juniper Mist:
- HPE: 13%
- Juniper: 4%
By comparison, Cisco Systems has 46% market share in the same time period, which is 3.5 times that of HPE. Even by joining forces, HPE and Juniper have a long way to go to catch the market leader.
Juniper Mist: A Growth Story
Market growth is a different story entirely; Juniper Mist is way out ahead. For the first three quarters of 2023, Juniper Mist grew 47% year over year for cloud-managed WLAN, according to Dell’Oro. HPE Aruba’s growth for cloud-managed WLAN was just 4%.
HPE Aruba grew 17% for private cloud and on-premises managed WLAN.
Meanwhile, Dell’Oro’s Morgan says Cisco’s market share has been shrinking over the past decade. She noted that If HPE can accelerate Mist’s growth by hitching it to HPE’s go-to-market capabilities, it could take even more from the incumbent.
The problem is, without explicit strategic guidance from HPE or Juniper about what will happen to each wireless portfolio, potential customers may decide to sit on the sidelines or go with someone else.
The press release announcing the acquisition was heavy on AI, which is Mist’s compelling differentiator in the WLAN market. “If the market reads the press release and thinks it’s over for Aruba, and there’s still a year before the acquisition closes,” said Morgan, then customers might spend that whole year assuming there’s no future for Aruba.
At present, the plan seems to be to offer two separate products. Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim said in a press briefing that he wasn’t concerned about product overlap because it means the combined company can address more customer use cases.
For example, customers that want a cloud-managed offering can go with Mist. Customers that prefer an on-prem or hybrid cloud offering can choose Aruba.
In the same press briefing, HPE CEO Antonio Neri echoed those sentiments. “The first opportunity is cross-sell and upsell. Over time, we’ll bring the best of both worlds to have true, modern, AI-driven networking at massive scale.”
However, Rahim said “over time we’ll thoughtfully integrate into a single roadmap.”
The question is, how much time will this take? And will the road map leave one product behind?
