Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) found a new customer for its autonomous network solution in the form of a luxury lifestyle hotel in London.

Aethos London Shoreditch, found in East London, is leveraging HPE's "self-driving network" as part of a remodelling that saw a full replacement of legacy wired and wireless access architecture for the 164-room hotel. In its place is HPE Aruba Central, with HPE Aruba Networking Access Points in each guest room and a wider deployment of HPE Networking CX6200 and CX6300 Switches.

According to HPE, Aethos’ new stack features end-to-end visibility across entire environments with consistent, secure access for guests and staff. Returning guests and members are recognized across properties by the platform, with secure, personalized connectivity delivered through single sign-on and uninterrupted roaming.

Aethos’ IT teams also get a purported boost with real-time data, automation, and AI-driven insights, moving beyond manual troubleshooting to more strategic workloads with a 90% improvement in operational efficiency. Jake Greenall, GM for Aethos London Shoreditch, trumpeted that the hotel had “transitioned to a secure, AI-native network with HPE.”

Another Anglo-Aruba announcement

The deployment is another British home run for the Aruba line, following the recent HPE networking refit for another London establishment, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Both projects touted AI benefits from using Aruba, but with no sign yet of HPE’s other AI crown jewel in the Juniper Mist solution, now part of the HPE portfolio thanks to its Juniper Networks integration.

At its Discover event last year in Barcelona, Juniper CEO turned executive networking VP for HPE Rami Rahim banged the drum on so-called self-driving networks in a conversation with this title, labeling it the ultimate vision for the firm via the acquisition.

“It started out as sort of simple telemetry and data collection, then it moved into sort of the realm of insights. We still have peers in the industry that are talking mostly about observability. We believe that observability is only a means to an end. It's not the end itself. From there, it's more like assisted self-driving capabilities, where you still sort of have to have your hands on the wheels, and you can sort of influence things … Networks will be like that eventually, and I don't think it's far into the distant future,” Rahim said.

The exec broke down the differences in product lines by describing Mist as being written largely for cloud deployments, with Aruba Central touting a more diverse deployment model capability.

“Now, over time, our goal is to unify the experience of these two platforms by leveraging the microservices architecture for both and cross-pollinating capabilities from one onto another,” Rahim added.