Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) continues to drive Juniper Networks-derived AI innovation into its enterprise networking stack, a push networking executive Sujai Hajela said is backed by long-standing development that has kept the vendor ahead of heated rivals like Cisco.

HPE’s latest push focused on Juniper Networks’ self-driving network resources to now include more AI-driven systems and hardware spread across more of the HPE product and software portfolio. The updates included new AI data center networking, routing, agentic AIOps, and security systems targeting distributed AI-driven environments.

Hajela, who is EVP and GM for enterprise campus and branch at HPE Networking, explained to SDxCentral during a one-on-one interview at the recent HPE Discover 2026 event that these efforts bolster an important competitive advantage for the vendor.

“The biggest advantage was right from day one, we were very deliberate about our journey to a self-driving network,” Hajela said. “We feel our system is agentic ready. We are able to embrace and take advantage. … Look at the network. When I say we are agentic ready, it's all about autonomous agency, so I can do these actions because of the autonomous agents being able to do what they need to do.”

Those efforts came on the heels of Cisco injecting its own AI-backed updates into its networking portfolio through its Cloud Control platform with help from its Splunk observability platform, moves that Hajela downplayed as showing those rivals were “still on step one, the cloud-native part of the journey.”

“They have existing real estate,” Hajela contends. “AI came along and they said, ‘okay, let me put AI on top of it,' and that’s a bolt-on. And then they said, ‘okay, let me figure out how lots of data, whether it’s Splunk, and let me use that data. But, here’s the problem: now you’ve literally put on a data base and you’re asking it questions. There is no concept of autonomous. Where is the orchestration? Where is the episodic memory for AI-driven support, which we have compared to the competition?”

Hajela viewpoint comes from many angles, including previously serving at executive roles at Nortel Networks and Motorola, before joining Cisco in 2010. There, Hajela worked in various segments of the networking giant’s operations before co-founding Mist Systems in late 2014.

Mist quickly gained recognition in the enterprise networking space, recognition that eventually drew a $405 million acquisition from Juniper Networks and subsequently was a key component to HPE’s $14 billion purchase of Juniper and is now part of the more unified HPE networking portfolio.

Hajela noted that HPE is now tapping into that history, specifically pointing to learnings from its Marvis AIOps platform.

“If you think about it very clearly, this AI-driven support, which we have been talking about, Marvis has been learning for the last 10 years, and this is not data coming from devices, this is issues, scenarios, user experiences, which have been improved, or user issues that have been solved in this episodic way,” Hajela said, adding that there is also a more structured architecture “to be able to insert new skills.”

“Because if you think about it, yes, Cisco can claim agentic, but an agent knows what to do, but it does not know how to do it. How to do it comes in from a skill, and that is the key difference,” Hajela explained. “Even if they can have an agentic framework, or a framework which is not agentic yet, they can’t talk about it. Our is in production and is running in the wild today.”

Market rankings and results

That running has made a mark on the market, with Hajela pointing to Gartner’s most recent quad-box rankings and HPE’s own financial results.

Gartner’s latest ranking of enterprise wired and wireless LAN vendors positioned HPE in the most upper-right of its “leaders” quadrant, just ahead of quadrant neighbors Cisco, Huawei, and Arista Networks. Gartner argued HPE’s position was backed by several AI-related references, including mention of HPE’s dual-platform Aruba Central and Mist offerings being connected by a common Marvis AI engine and HPE’s service alignment that closely matches “buyer demand for platforms that emphasize AI operations for assurance, automation and security at scale.”

However, it should also be noted that Gartner’s market ranking has shifted significantly over the past 12 months. The 2025 version of that report had Juniper Networks, Huawei, HPE, and Fortinet as market leaders, with Cisco the only vendor ranked among market “challengers.” HPE maintaining its leadership ranking by combining two previous quadrant entrants is not a surprise, but Cisco has managed to now invade that top box.

Despite that rise, Hajela noted that Cisco is continuing to struggle with integration, explaining that he was at Cisco when it acquired Meraki and that integration is still ongoing.

“They could not bring both the platforms together, even today, but what we have been just starting to talk about in a decade, we did it in less than nine months and I think it was the power of the architecture of both the platforms,” Hajela said of what HPE is doing with its Aruba and Mist offerings. “This was already cloud-native microservices AI … and so by bringing the two platforms, which are same blueprint of microservices. Instead of Aruba writing five features and Mist writing five features, now both teams combined are writing their features at the same time, so the agility of innovation is just mind blowing right now.”

That metaphor could also apply to HPE’s networking results, which surged 148% during its most recent fiscal quarter. Those results were obviously enhanced by the Juniper Networks acquisition, but HPE CEO Antonio Neri also told investors that networking orders were “growing significantly faster than revenue,” with orders more than doubling.

“The unified portfolio and sales force are already strengthening our market position and growth momentum,” Neri said during the earnings call. “Our combined networking portfolio and vision for self-driving networks is resonating with customers, and that enthusiasm, together with strong go-to-market execution, is reflected in our results.”