Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) rolled out a handful of AI-based, retail-focused updates to its networking gear that further tie together the vendor’s newly acquired Juniper Networks assets, a move that at least one analyst noted continues to show steady integration process.

The updates include HPE bolstering its Mist AIOps platform by integrating its Marvis virtual network assistant with the HPE Juniper Networking Premium Analytics platform. This move provides location intelligence and network performance data into the Marvis natural language interface.

Gayle Levin, head of wireless product marketing at HPE, explained in an interview with SDxCentral that this combination provides an easier support path for retailers.

“What that allows us to do is really to look at trends in a very intuitive way, both on the IT operational side as well as the business, and we can look at where's the best place for you to put your products, etc., and to be able to do it with that ChatGPT-like interface,” Levin said.

HPE also boosted its Aruba Networking CX 6000 Switch Series with a new eight-port power over Ethernet (PoE) and non-PoE models designed to connect point-of-sale terminals, IoT devices, and staff systems running on the network. This platform is a fanless switch, which Levin said was important in a retail environment.

Levin also noted that this software-hardware combination can help retailers get ahead of any network issues. This includes the ability to conduct 20,000 “synthetic transactions” per day “to proactively identify problems before they occur,” and can do this in Wi-Fi 7 environments.

“We believe it's the only one in the industry that's delivering that support for Wi-Fi 7,” Levin said.

HPE’s Nonstop Compute platform also received new multigenerational clustering that provides 15% more performance capacity compared to the previous iteration released in mid-2025, with the new iteration able to support scaling up to 4,000 nodes. There is also a transparent data encryption feature to provide added security for customer data targeted at “evolving data privacy and compliance regulations.”

The HPE Nonstop Compute and Aruba Networking CX switches are available through the vendor’s Greenlake cloud platform.

HPE continues Juniper Networks integration

Bob Laliberte, principal analyst at theCUBE Research, noted that while the latest moves were “not a huge update, it is a nice one.” Laliberte specifically pointed to the continued Nonstop updates, “which is really a critical supplier for this space … for credit card transaction clearing,” and for digital resiliency.

“Twenty years ago we would have called this business continuity operations and now it's all about digital resilience,” Laliberte said. “I think the Nonstop is just a reaffirmation of the importance of having that type of environment going at all times.”

More broadly, the moves continue HPE’s Juniper Networks integration process.

HPE’s management recently touted that progress during the vendor’s European Discover event last month, an event that included a heavy dose of AI-infused hardware updates.

Levin noted that these latest moves were the first following the December news, highlighting the ongoing “cross-pollination of the two portfolios … especially in the area of AI.”

“Whether the customer is on Aruba or whether they're on Juniper, they're going to get that same benefit across with AI,” Levin said. “The two areas that we've talked a lot about, although there are obviously more, one is that whole large experience model, so having all that right data that we can leverage and get to the best insights, and then that agentic AI innovation that we're sharing across both to help get to that self-driving network as fast as we can.”

Levin add that this speed has been helped by the microservices-based construct HPE and Juniper Networks used for their respective AI architectures that “makes it so easy, and that's why we've been able to do so much in such a short amount of time. Otherwise, it would be very hard to do architecturally.”

Laliberte concurred, noting that early investment in a microservices-based architecture provided a smooth integration ramp, which he expects to continue throughout the year.

“What I'm expecting to see over the rest of the year is more of that integration of the functionality and the microservices and combining of the user interfaces so that eventually it becomes just the same interface that each side is using as they become fully integrated over time,” Laliberte explained. “And when I say ‘over time,’ I'm talking probably in a five- to six-year timeframe, so don't expect it overnight, but I think it seems like a pretty elegant solution for how they are bringing that up.”