Juniper Networks again topped rivals in a ranking of enterprise wired and WLAN infrastructure vendors, including soon-to-be-parent company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), as well as Fortinet and Cisco.

The latest crowning came from Gartner, which ranked Juniper as the most upper-right vendor in the “leaders” box of its latest Magic Quadrant four-square game. Juniper just out-upper-righted HPE, and had a bit more room over fellow leaders Huawei, Cisco, Fortinet and Extreme Networks.

Gartner touted Juniper’s artificial intelligence (AI)-infused Mist platform, its expected plans to invest in generative AI (genAI), strong security offerings and its campus fabric platform.

“Juniper’s client base is globally diverse, with particular focus on the general enterprise market, as well as retail, education, government and health care,” Gartner’s report notes. “The company continues to invest in integrated AI and ML [machine learning] operations, as well as cloud-based security capabilities. Gartner expects that Juniper will invest in genAI integration for enhanced capabilities in its natural language processing interface.”

That base was also highlighted by Dell’Oro Group, which also cited Juniper as a leader in the WLAN space. The research firm found Juniper grew WLAN revenues both year over year and sequentially during the fourth quarter of 2023, despite overall WLAN market revenues sinking 26% in Q4.

“I think that Mist is really resonating, that’s what I’m hearing in the market,” Dell’Oro Group Research Director Siân Morgan said in an interview with SDxCentral. “Enterprises are finding the solution very compelling. They’ve done a great job marketing it as well in terms of the functionality. They’ve had some great customers come forward and say how it’s revolutionized their business.”

Morgan also added that Juniper’s growth was helped by the vendor’s overall smaller market share, but “their message is really resonating.”

Juniper’s pending $14 billion acquisition by HPE should prove to be a powerful WLAN combination.

Gartner noted multiple highlights of HPE’s Aruba WLAN platform that echoed Juniper’s list, including its campus fabric, security, switching and AI. However, Gartner questioned its bifurcated cloud network access control (NAC) strategy, lack of third-party management capabilities and jumbled network-as-a-service (NaaS) offering.

“Aruba has multiple NaaS offerings for both end customers and its channel, which have been cited as confusing when prospective buyers consider licensing options and service packs,” Gartner wrote.

The Gartner report also included boilerplate commentary tied to HPE’s pending purchase of Juniper, stating the analyst firm “will provide additional insight and research to clients as more detail becomes available.”

Dell’Oro Group’s Morgan also noted that Juniper’s ability to grow WLAN market share under the cloud of its pending acquisition will be closely monitored in 2024.

“I think that there’s a risk — definitely — while we’re waiting for the acquisition to take place that customers will hold off purchasing or renewing,” Morgan said. “There is a risk that customers will be scared about portfolio rationalization that might happen, so we have to watch that carefully.”

That risk also applies to HPE’s Aruba platform, which has a larger share of the WLAN market. Morgan’s mid-year 2023 report had cited HPE and Cisco as both driving market growth.

“There definitely is overlap, and wireless LAN, in particular, is an area where there’s a lot of overlap between the two companies,” Morgan said of HPE and Juniper. “It’s definitely an area where customers could be concerned.”

Gartner also noted in its latest ranking that the market for Wi-Fi 7-based technology deployments will lag through 2026. “Over 70% of (WLAN) deployments will lack a tangible use case for organizations to deploy Wi-Fi 7, as most business applications do not require the enhanced capabilities of the new standard,” the firm wrote.

It did add that the following year will be an inflection point for Wi-Fi 7, noting “70% of enterprises refreshing and/or expanding their WLAN will upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 due to future-proofing aspirations and vendor push combined with aggressive product marketing.”