Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending acquisition of Juniper Networks is the latest large-scale deal to cause consternation across the market and significant interest from SDxCentral readers in 2024.

The deal was announced just weeks into the new year, and included hope from management that it might close before the year ended. That hope was dashed by a recent second inquiry by U.S. regulators, though HPE management sounds confident it will close on the acquisition in early 2025.

In the meantime, customers have been struggling to unpack what impact a consolidated company might have on operations. Analysts have noted that the struggle has caused some enterprises to pause their purchase plans.

“I’ve had customers put things on hold right now, and not just the Juniper side but both sides,” Andre Kindness, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told SDxCentral in a recent interview. “Typically, if customers are strong enough to look outside of Cisco and they’re not a Cisco shop, then HPE, Aruba, Juniper are the primary ones that they’re looking at. I’ve had customers put some of that on hold at this point.”

SDxCentral posted exhaustively on the news all year, digging into insight from executives, rival firms, analysts, and end-users to shed light on the deal and its broader impact. Below are the five HPE/Juniper stories that drew the most attention from readers in 2024.

HPE-Juniper, Cisco networking chaos has enterprises nervous Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending acquisition of Juniper Networks and Cisco’s recent corporate restructuring that de-emphasizes some of its legacy operations is causing a run of chaos across the networking ecosystem that has some enterprises pausing investments as they wait out the storm. It’s also opening potential conquest opportunities for rivals. Read more

DOJ scrutiny of HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks: A deep dive into underlying concerns In my experience within the networking industry, antitrust investigations often focus on market consolidation and competition. However, when national security is at stake, the implications become far more significant. Read more

Juniper’s slide continues, but its acquisition by HPE remains on track Juniper Networks’ financial performance continued to deteriorate during the first three months of this year, with the only bright spot being ongoing strong growth of its artificial intelligence (AI)-heavy Mist product line. Read more

Can Juniper save HPE’s Intelligent Edge? Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending $14 billion Juniper Networks acquisition continues its march toward a potential early 2025 closing, a conclusion that HPE management is banking on to help boost its lagging edge operations. Read more

HPE, Juniper execs nearly commit to full continuity Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) CEO Antonio Neri and Juniper Networks’ CEO Rami Rahim have nearly committed to Juniper Networks’ full product and service offering as part of HPE’s pending $14 billion acquisition of the networking firm. But they left themselves just enough wiggle room to back out of that if needed, which could cause concern for current enterprise customers. Read more

And for more on this topic, please check out this SDxCentral Special Report.