Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) added more “self” to its “self-driving” network push, launching new updates across its Mist and Aruba Central offerings designed to ease network management and better position the vendor ahead of aggressive rivals.

The latest updates begin with its dynamic capacity optimization service that Mittal Parekh, senior director of product and solutions marketing at HPE, described in an interview with SDxCentral as the ability for the network to proactively monitor unlicensed wireless spectrum bandwidth availability and adjust network resources to minimizes potential disruptions for end-user applications. This includes monitoring that traffic across the current 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz unlicensed spectrum channels used by Wi-Fi systems.

Parekh noted this is key for enterprise locations near other heavy unlicensed spectrum use areas or nearby licensed spectrum channels for radar systems, military bases, or weather stations.

“What we do is we learn the frequency of the radar hits as well as channels we get hit on, and based on available capacity, we will minimize this. We'll try to avoid those channels that get frequently hit, and we are reducing the impact,” Parekh explained, adding that, “OK, nobody can guarantee 100% but what we are delivering now is a self-driving action that takes this chunk away from IT.”

This feature also plays into the network’s “self-driving” ability.

“We are not providing IT with the recommendation or just recommendation, or we are not explaining that the Wi-Fi spectrum is so messed up,” Parekh said of the system. “We are helping them by doing a self-driving action that sets back the whole environment with the existing capacity, and everybody is hunky dory.”

The system is also now able to autonomously fix virtualized LAN (VLAN) configuration errors in the access layer to help prevent IT teams deal with intermittent connectivity issues that can lead to “black-holing of client traffic.” This fully automates the system’s previous “driver assisted VLAN remediation.”

“Now we have a self-driving action where it automatically detects mis-matched VLANs; it will automatically correct configuration errors; validate those things that, OK, everything is looking good; and ultimately, we prevent all these black holes of traffic,” Parekh said.

The last big feature update is rogue dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) protection that can autonomously detect and fix unauthorized DHCP servers, which could be linked to an external security risk. Parekh said this tackles a common pain point for IT teams.

“Look, there are only two types of enterprises in this world: one who has a rogue DHCP server and they know about it, and the second one is they have one and they don't know about it. There are no other options here,” Parekh said. “What we have done is now our AIOps platform can detect a rogue DHCP server and shut it down and just let IT know that we've done this.”

Delineating market differentiation and confusion

These services are launching across HPE’s Mist and Aruba Central platforms, continuing what has been the vendor’s efforts to better align updates across the two seemingly similar platforms.

Jeff Aaron, VP for product and solutions marketing at HPE, noted that distribution of these efforts are being refined through HPE’s overhauled channel partner program, and that Aaron said have already started to pay off.

“You'll see that we've had some pretty strong quarters, revenue quarters already,” Aaron said. “I can't talk to future quarters, but we expected that it's going to continue to remain strong, and it's due to this. We got to get out there and get in there more. I think there's never been a time where the competition is weaker than they are right now and in terms of being able to execute on this, when people see it, we generally have a very high conversion rate.”

Those alignment efforts also come as HPE’s rivals continue to poke for weaknesses as part of the Juniper Networks integration.

“There's always going to be some degree of confusion … and I think our competitors are doing their best to kind of add to that,” Aaron said, adding that HPE’s focus is on making its plans “very clear.”

“[Aruba] Central and Mist are not going away. They are on a common journey to a self-driving experience. We are cross-pollinating features, both software and hardware, to kind of prove on that. And we've executed on that,” Aaron said of a process that the vendor’s has been aggressively working through since HPE’s Juniper Networks’ acquisition last year. “We've done more in six months than, for example, Cisco Meraki has done in over 13 years to bring those together.”

Aaron’s Cisco Meraki nod touched on an oft-discussed market opportunity, including a Dell’Oro Group report from late last year. That report noted a potential Cisco refresh opportunity could provide a foot-in-the-door for aggressively priced competitors like HPE.

“The major vendors are eyeing Cisco’s refresh opportunity, which is in the billions of dollars,” Siân Morgan, research director at Dell’Oro Group, wrote. “Cisco is doing a great job converting those deals, but there is still a significant number of ports out there to be replaced. Competitors are chasing the opportunity by touting high-performance hardware and AIOps features.”

Morgan’s analysis also noted that the Juniper Networks-fortified HPE was now “neck-and-neck” with China-based Huawei for the No. 2 position in the worldwide campus switch market.

Parekh also delineated HPE’s technical position against rivals, pointing specifically to its long-standing AI integration efforts, which are a big focus of the vendor’s latest update.

“All of our competitors are either dealing with or publishing AI chatbots that it can chat with, or AI assistant that it can say, ‘unravel this for me,’ or ‘please explain this to me,’ or a single-action AI agent that what lovingly everybody calls agentic AI,” Parekh said. “Well, we are well past that. We have taken a low hanging, yet complex network problems that IT face on a daily basis.”