Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending acquisition of Juniper is far from certain, but even the gloomiest prognosticators indicate that there’s still a chance. However, analysts note that enterprises that currently house services from either of those vendors need to evaluate their current approach to see if they should ride out a new combination or look for alternatives.

HPE’s pending acquisition of Juniper was waylaid by the Department of Justice (DOJ) filing a lawsuit blocking the deal based on potential anti-competitive concerns. The main thrust of that argument is that consolidation of the wireless LAN market’s No. 2 and No. 3 vendors would hurt market choice and innovation.

HPE was initially targeting closure of that deal by the end of the first quarter of this year, but the DOJ lawsuit could push any potential closing toward later in the year.

Siân Morgan, research director at Dell’Oro Group, explained that enterprises in the meantime should be actively looking at their current HPE and Juniper usage and see if they can use the acquisition and potential uncertainty to help shape what a combined HPE and Juniper ecosystem might look like.

“My recommendation for an enterprise would be, whatever their vendor is, whether it's Aruba or whether it's Juniper on the campus side, I would say take a hard look at the other vendor’s solutions and really make your desires known to the organization because they're in the midst of aligning the road maps and that means there's an opportunity to influence them and to pick the best of both,” Morgan said.

Morgan noted that both vendors have strengths, “so you have to hope and expect the best, and really expect the best out of both, be informed about both, and what both bring to the table.” This includes HPE’s hardware and Juniper’s focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and its Mist platform.

“Both portfolios have strengths,” Morgan added. “Aruba has some excellent access points. Juniper is very known for AIOps and Mist. So those are two strengths that when put together sounds like it really could be a winning solution.”

Will Townsend, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, echoed Morgan’s views.

“Aruba Central has been very powerful. Mist has been very powerful from an AI perspective,” Townsend said. “This is just my reading the tea leaves … but if the company were smart, they would combine what they’ve been able to do with Central, bring in the Mist AI infrastructure and Marvis the AI assistant, and blend that software stack together.”

Not surprisingly, HPE and Juniper executives have been touting that winning formula.

Juniper CEO Rami Rahim, for instance, recently told SDxCentral, “I am a firm believer that we will be an even stronger company when this deal is cleared and we become part of the HPE family. And then once that happens, I’m excited to partner up with [HPE CEO Antonia Neri] to head up the combined networking business and to double down on the innovation that’s happening both in the space of AI for networks and networks for AI.”

Morgan did add that while there is definite upside from HPE acquiring Juniper, integration execution will be vital.

“It’s not a slam dunk and it’s not like one-plus-one-equals-two,” Morgan said. “They’re going to have to do a lot of work to make this actually mean more than just the sum of their market shares and there’s a lot of risk for that, but I think there’s some great opportunity.”

Are there HPE-Juniper alternatives? However, if that combined option does not work for an enterprise moving forward, Morgan did cite some alternatives.

The first noted was Arista, which Morgan said was looking to grow campus revenues.

“They’re well on their way to meeting that, especially on the switch side, and I would say on wireless LAN it’s going less well,” Morgan said. “But they decided to break out from their existing data center customers, they have a real opportunity, and they’re a very small player today so there’s a whole market ahead of them that they can bit into.”

Morgan also pointed to Ubiquity, which recently launched new access points and switches, “that are high availability, higher-end hardware.”

“They’re clearly targeting larger enterprises,” Morgan said. “Their sweet spot has always been on the smaller branch, [small-to-mid-sized business] and prosumer side. And now with this higher-end hardware that's signaling a change.”

Netgear was also mentioned by Morgan as a possible alternative.

“They are a very small player in the campus side,” Morgan said. “They've had some success with ProAV switches over the last little while and their CEO has clearly stated that he wants to grow Netgear for business. He's looking for acquisitions or product adjacencies, so that's always interesting. I'm watching carefully what's happening there.”

The final alternative mentioned was a bit broader, with Morgan stating growing interest in network-as-a-service (NaaS) providers like Nile, Meter, and Join Digital. Dell’Oro Group is predicting that campus NaaS (CNaaS) market revenues will surge 70% this year.

“[I am] watching those carefully to see how they grow and how they can change the market,” Morgan added.