CEO Antonio Neri On HPE’s Supercomputing ChatGPT Advantage, Axis Security And GreenLake Momentum

How does the Axis Security acquisition position HPE versus SASE competitors like Cisco and Palo Alto Networks?

We announced another great acquisition with Axis Security. This is the fourth acquisition in two months. Last week, we announced the [acquisition of] Athonet, which is in the private 5G space.

When you add Athonet with Axis Security plus, obviously, our intelligent edge portfolio with Aruba, we now have the most comprehensive edge portfolio in the industry.

We now are bringing together the entire connectivity layer with Wi-Fi, LAN, SD-WAN and private 5G. And on top of that, we have a consistent security framework with secure access service edge [SASE], which brings elements of the connectivity and the firewall with ZTNA [zero trust network access], CASB [cloud access security broker] and SWG [secure web gateway]. Now we will be the most comprehensive because some of the vendors you named only address one aspect of that security whether it’s the firewall, CASB or ZTNA.

Axis Security addresses all of that together with Aruba, where you have our firewall and obviously the most comprehensive connectivity layer. All of this will be fully integrated into our HPE GreenLake platform, which will be offered as a subscription service. Therefore, our partners will be able to sell all these solutions to drive a SASE model with recurring revenue, while also selling the underlying connectivity that comes with it.

This is another fantastic acquisition aligned to the mega trends we see where customers are now approaching this [edge market] from a security layer into the networking layer versus what traditionally has been more of a networking layer up into the security layer.

So the combination of access with [SD-WAN provider] Silver Peak, which we bought two years ago, plus the rest of Aruba, gives us the most comprehensive edge portfolio in the industry.