Aruba Networks swept the last remaining vestiges of Cisco's switching gear from the Pentagon building as part of a Department of Defense modernization effort announced today.

The deal will see Aruba deploy its Edge Services Platform (ESP) architecture to automate the network, eliminating time consuming and often tedious processes such as port mapping and initial switch configuration. Aruba ESP is targeted at campuses, data centers, branches, and remote workers, but it only supports Aruba’s access points (APs), switches, and SD-WAN gateways.

The vendor's Access Switches will replace existing Cisco switching gear that has reached end of life. The deployment will include more than 150,000 wired ports, distributed across the 6.5 million-square-foot facility. Alongside wired infrastructure, the DoD plans to deploy 3,000 additional Aruba APs to further extend wireless access throughout the campus.

While Aruba ESP can be operated in the cloud, on-site, or as a managed service through one of Aruba’s partners, the DoD will be using Aruba's ClearPass Policy Manager to orchestrate the networking overhaul. Initially the platform will be used to manage Aruba's switches to secure access controls across the network. However, Aruba notes that the DoD could extend these controls to its APs, unifying both wired and wireless networks.

The contract win comes as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)-owned Aruba expands its branch and campus offerings beyond SD-branch to SD-WAN.

In July, HPE acquired SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak in a $925 million bid to bolster its edge-to-cloud strategy. As part of this strategy, Aruba would integrate Silver Peak's WAN technologies into a single offering. This, according to analysts, positions the company to more directly compete with Cisco's Meraki and Viptela offerings.

Gartner's latest WAN Edge Infrastructure report saw Aruba leap from a niche player in 2019, to visionary, while Silver Peak has long been regarded as a market leader.