The road to HPE Discover 2024 is paved with network innovations

In the run-up to major user conferences, most vendors will hold their major announcements to drop during the event. Maybe there will be a hint or a tease, but the major news typically waits for the main stage presentation.

When we looked at our development programs and roadmap at the beginning of 2024, we realized that our product management and engineering teams were delivering a wide range of new products over the first half of 2024. So, instead of waiting until June 17 to introduce this abundance of innovation, we decided to take a different approach and introduce them ahead of our HPE Discover customer conference. We call this the Road to HPE Discover 2024.

These networking innovations span our total portfolio and reflect our core strengths as a security-first, AI-powered network solutions provider. As we head into Discover week, I thought it would be helpful to summarize what we have introduced over the last 90 days.

·         GenAI for Network Operations that is safe and on-point. By leveraging our comprehensive HPE Aruba Networking Central data lake that we have assembled over the last decade, we have been able to train a network-centric LLM without relying on or interfacing with the Internet at large. This means that customer privacy is maintained while the answers delivered by the LLM-powered search are less prone to hallucinations because models are trained on relevant, focused network-specific information.

·         Wi-Fi 7+. The “plus” comes from the fact that this newest family of Wi-Fi 7 access points continues to extend the mission of an AP with extensive support for automated spectrum management and optimization, built-in security, and the expansion of the access point as an IoT platform. In conjunction with HPE Aruba Networking Central and as IoT becomes an important source for building AI data lakes and activating inference solutions, support of on-AP container execution and extensive IoT protocol support means that even if you’re not ready to move to Wi-Fi 7, these APs will deliver huge value in building AI solutions while future-proofing your wireless network.

·         AI for Security, Security for AI. At the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, we showcased innovations for both sides of the AI security paradigm. From an AI-for-security perspective, we expanded our AI-powered HPE Aruba Networking Central Client Insights IoT discovery and profiling solution to now include use of AI-based behavioral analytics to continuously monitor and identify changes in operation that can indicate compromise. Because AI data lakes, processes, and models are now so highly valued, they make a tempting target for hackers. The network plays a crucial role in security for AI, and at RSA we introduced a new cloud-based Firewall-as-a-Service as part of our SSE solution, along with new security observability dashboards and an integrated SD-WAN/Secure Web Gateway SASE offering.

·         Breakthrough Private 5G Cellular for the Enterprise. When we acquired Athonet in 2023, our goal was to build on their market-leading core cellular capabilities to completely re-define what an enterprise Private 5G solution looks like. And that’s exactly what we’ve done. Up until now, enterprise private cellular has been an arduous, bespoke undertaking that can involve up to seven different vendors to assemble a solution. Now with HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G, we have introduced the breakthrough single-vendor solution that delivers everything needed in a single package along with the simplicity and ease of management that we have pioneered with enterprise Wi-Fi.

·         Security-first, AI-powered Network Management. The common denominator of all these innovations is the unifying presence of HPE Aruba Networking Central. With cloud-native services managing the entire network across wired, wireless, data center and WAN, customers have a single point of visibility and control to ensure they are getting the most out of this critical part of their IT infrastructure. 

These innovations have been impactful enough to the business to have been mentioned by HPE CEO Antonio Neri during our recent Q2 FY24 earnings call:

“We announced significant new innovations during the quarter to align with HPE’s broader AI strategy. These solutions include generative AI capabilities to improve AIOps, and Wi-Fi 7 access points that capture edge data for AI inferencing. In addition, last month we launched new security and AI observability tools to help fight AI cyber risks. And just yesterday, we expanded the most complete private 5G and Wi-Fi portfolio in the market with the launch of HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G. All of this will be delivered through our HPE GreenLake cloud platform.”

All of these announcements focus on key customer needs across security, AI, and connectivity. So “The Road to Discover” is an apt metaphor for the crucial role the network plays in capturing, securing, transporting and delivering access to data and applications to anyone, anywhere at any time, tying together users and devices, compute and storage from the edge to the cloud. 

Now, the astute observer will ask: “what about switching?” Well, I didn’t say we’ve announced all the innovations we have ready to go—stay tuned to HPE Discover 2024 to hear yet more exciting news covering our networking solutions. And if you are attending the event, we’ll be showcasing these new solutions and our full portfolio in the Demo Showcase, 130+ technical sessions and the Atmosphere Technical General Session.