Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) bolstered its Aruba Networking Central platform with new deployment options, deeper observability, and a greater reach, updates that could better position Aruba against rivals both within and outside of HPE.

Aruba Networking Central is HPE’s network management platform covering the vendor’s wireless, wired, WAN, and IoT systems. It has been updated over the past decade with various security and artificial intelligence (AI) enhancements that have allowed its SD-WAN capabilities to work as a single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) platform.

The latest updates include the ability to deploy the platform in a VPC environment and in on-premises environments. The former is targeted at customers requiring more stringent control over data security and control to meet regulatory and data sovereignty needs, while the latter can allow for deployments disconnected from the cloud.

The Aruba Networking Central platform continues to be offered for public software-as-a-service (SaaS) and network-as-a-service (NaaS) deployments. Customers can also access the public cloud and VPC deployment options through HPE’s GreenLake cloud platform.

That access includes more global points of presence (PoPs), with dedicated intances in the U.S., Canada, the European Union (EU), Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and China.

The platform also has a new AI-powered observability system that can flag optimization alerts tied to performance issues. It also now includes a one-year subscription of the OpsRamp Extension license that allows for monitoring of third-party devices from vendors like Cisco, Arista, and Juniper Networks.

This monitoring can now take advantage of an expanded data lake pool of more than 5.2 million managed network devices and 2 billion total network devices. This expansion includes the previously announced AI Operations (AIOps) capabilities tied to its AI infusion early last year.

Is Aruba now more powerful than Mist? HPE’s Aruba platform has been a key revenue and service driver for the vendor and has become a dynamic underlay to HPE’s pending $14 billion purchase of Juniper Networks. Aruba has for years been HPE’s competitive answer to Juniper Network’s Mist platform.

Management for both vendors have repeatedly downplayed the need to rationalize either platform post-deal.

“Combining our complementary portfolios will supercharge HPE’s edge-to-cloud strategy, accelerating our entire portfolio with AI-enabled innovation,” HPE CEO Antonio Neri said when the deal was announced. “When our proposed acquisition closes, we will create a new networking innovator, with our comprehensive portfolio for and partners. The transaction is expected to double the size of our networking business, which will be the core foundation of covering the anticipated $180 billion market opportunity with our combined IP.”

However, analysts have noted that despite the deal’s complimentary nature, there will likely need to be some rationalization between Aruba and Mist.

“Aruba Central has been very powerful. Mist has been very powerful from an AI perspective,” Will Townsend, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SDxCentral in an interview. “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.”

Siân Morgan, research director at Dell’Oro Group, explained to SDxCentral in a recent interview that this potential means enterprises 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 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.”

Others have noted that HPE might be forced to make a decision on whether to support Aruba or Mist long term due to the current Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit looking to block the deal.

“They haven’t offered to divest anything, and if this deal isn’t just about acquiring Juniper’s Mist then offer to divest either Aruba or Mist. They haven’t done that,” Jennifer Rie, senior litigation analyst for antitrust at Bloomberg Intelligence, said. “To me, maybe, they could get this all cleared up if they offer to divest one or the other and get this closed, but they haven’t, and so far it doesn’t seem like they have a plan to. Maybe they will down the road.”