Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks is set to bolster the ability for both to better penetrate the 5G telecommunications market -- a market that remains in desperate need of network management support.

While much of the buzz around the deal has centered on Juniper boosting HPE’s networking and artificial intelligence (AI) efforts to battle rival Cisco, the combined operation will also be able to piece together a more complete 5G support package for operators.

HPE and Juniper have both been players in the growing 5G ecosystem. Juniper with its networking and open radio access network (RAN) support systems and HPE with its automation and private 5G moves.

Juniper CEO Rami Rahim touted the combination of 5G-related assets during the announcement press conference, stating it “gives us way more of the building blocks necessary to put together a comprehensive 5G and O-RAN solution for our customers.”

“Today, one of the challenges with 5G O-RAN is the ability to piece together these components into a seamless, fully integrated solution for our customers,” Rahim added. “I think, post-close, we will have a much better opportunity to provide these comprehensive solutions to capture that opportunity in the market.”

HPE CEO Antonio Neri, thankfully, agreed.

“Rami will get access to more capabilities than the ones that he traditionally has in the core, the metro or the edge,” Neri said. “This is a massive opportunity that will reignite and grow their service provider business with more assets than ever before.”

Ron Westfall, research director at The Futurum Group, noted in a recent podcast that the combined assets will help both players, especially as they look to battle rivals.

“Juniper definitely has an established, proven telecom business. In fact, it could be Juniper helping HPE pulling through more business on the telecom side because of these existing relationships,” Westfall said, later adding, “I think the combination with HPE can help Juniper’s telecom fortunes. And the fact is when you’re looking at the overall 5G space, I think there is simply new opportunities that will give the new HPE-Juniper opportunities that aren’t going to be unique to Cisco or say players like Dell and Lenovo, that is looking at O-RAN specifically.”

Westfall noted Juniper’s progress with its open RAN intelligent controller (RIC), which operates in the middle of an open RAN deployment as a kind of linkage to the wider network. It allows operators to deploy so-called xApps that then allow operators to design and control RAN functions, providing administrative RAN sovereignty over functions that are typically implemented as proprietary features on base stations.

“I think [this] is one area where they can make competitive inroads and that Cisco doesn’t have a dominating market position in at all at this juncture,” Westfall said of Juniper’s open RAN position. “And specifically, Juniper’s RAN intelligent controller … brings that intelligence and programmability to the RAN by enabling third-party applications. This is going to be important [to] improve service experience, reduce costs and deliver new business models.”

HPE can also further this progress by tapping into its wider influence.

“I think HPE can help through the channels to support the third-party applications, more influence with the developers and so forth to help drive more open RAN innovation, let alone overall open 5G innovation,” Westfall added.

This open RAN innovation is set to accelerate this year as more operators throw their financial weight behind the technology. The most recent example is AT&T’s announcement last month that it plans to spend up to $14 billion over the next several years to roll out open RAN across its network.

“Those types of scenarios, I think, both HPE and Juniper can play a more key role in,” Westfall said. “Also, I think that the fact that HPE offers RAN automation software can definitely enhance the new combined portfolio. So HPE and Juniper in this case are actually complimenting each other as they noted for what is a key motivation for this deal.”

The Juniper acquisition comes less than a year after HPE acquired Athonet in a move to bolster its Aruba SD-WAN efforts. However, the vendor also noted Athonet will play a part in expanding HPE’s 5G-based private network opportunities.

“I think that there is a massive opportunity for the telco operators and I passionately believe they should be the people that benefit and monetize the opportunity of private 5G,” Tom Craig, global VP and GM for HPE’s Communications Technology Group (CTG), told SDxCentral. “That’s how we want to position HPE, to be a partner and work with them to build opportunity, which was the logic as to why we decided to buy Athonet.”

Craig joined HPE in 2022, having previously served in executive roles at large-scale telecom operators like Vodafone, BT, Ooredoo and Millicom. HPE CFO Tarek Robbiati at that time tied Craig’s hire toward the vendor’s push into the 5G space. Craig said this experience colored his view on how HPE can help operators.

“Post-pandemic when the world was never more reliant on telecommunications in the history of the planet to function both as consumers and business, headline growth was 0.5%,” Craig said. “What I saw on the other side of the table and the companies I worked for are real struggles to find and validate new sources of growth while at the same time writing eye-watering checks for 5G spectrum and complete infrastructure overhauls on upgrading to 5G. Everyone is kind of scratching their heads saying, how do we incrementally monetize this? How do we create new sources of growth?”

Craig said that HPE is focused on helping those operators monetize those operations by streamlining their core infrastructure operations and providing ready-to-deploy revenue-generating services. This also includes greater use of automation to reduce “too many manual touch points in how these processes are performed right now.”

Westfall added that Juniper’s strong Wi-Fi Router and networking business will further flesh out this opportunity.

“HPE GreenLakes, edge compute and security SASE [secure access service edge] portfolio can lend a big hand here in terms of pulling through more Juniper Wi-Fi capabilities,” Westfall said. “HPE’s Aruba portfolio is already widely deployed throughout many global Wi-Fi implementations. And it can also quite simply strengthen HPE-Juniper to drive more private 5G and Wi-Fi services and business not only on a direct sale basis, but in terms of, say, supporting operators who are offering it as a managed service to enterprises out there.”