Antonio Neri Creates A ‘New Chapter Of HPE’ -- Now Comes The ‘Fun’ Part

HPE CEO Antonio Neri’s vision, conviction and determination to see his company's $13.4 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks through has earned him the spot as the No. 1 Most Influential executive on CRN’s Top 100 Executives list for 2025.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Antonio Neri knew that as he battled to complete the $13.4 billion Juniper Networks acquisition that would forever change HPE, it was important to stay true to the deeply held convictions that had led to this defining moment for him and the company.

“Despite all the challenges you find out there and a lot of adversity that sometimes comes your way, the important thing is to stay true to your principles and values,” said Neri, reflecting on his 30-year journey at HPE and the hard-fought, five-month legal battle with the U.S. Department of Justice over the acquisition. “That’s what has guided me throughout my career and definitely as a CEO. Look, I’m really proud of what we have done. I’m very excited for what comes next in this new chapter of HPE.”

That new chapter officially began after a settlement of the DOJ lawsuit cleared the way for the completion of the deal on July 2, two years and five months after Neri first contacted Juniper CEO Rami Rahim about the possibility of an acquisition by HPE.

Neri’s vision, conviction and determination to see the deal through—opening the door for partners to participate in the data center networking market with what he calls a “modern, secure and AI-driven networking infrastructure from client to the cloud”—has earned him the spot as the No. 1 Most Influential executive on CRN’s Top 100 Executives list for 2025.

So how did Neri feel once he had learned from HPE Executive Vice President and Chief Operating and Legal Officer John Schultz that a deal had been reached to settle the DOJ lawsuit?

“Actually the same as the day before,” said the unflappable Neri. “But obviously a sense of what I would call ‘relief.’ Because obviously from an employee and customer perspective, getting closure was very important. Personally, I was very confident throughout the 18 months or so that we went through the process. I was very consistent, very upbeat. Nothing changed from January 2024 [when the deal was announced].”

Neri expressed a deep sense of gratitude to the HPE team that fought to close the deal.

“The team worked really, really hard navigating the challenges that were put in front of us, and without their support we could have not closed this transaction,” he said. “So for me, it was a moment in time when I felt that the vision that I have led for the last seven and a half years [as CEO] is now finally coming all together.”

Coming all together indeed. The historic deal creates what Neri calls a new $35.17 billion industry powerhouse that for the first time gives HPE the full technology stack to deliver a next-generation AI-driven networking portfolio from the edge to the cloud with the potential to break the Cisco Systems enterprise and service provider network hegemony that has existed for decades.

“Our job is to give customers alternatives that are better than what is available in the market, and that alternative needs to be a better experience and lower cost that ultimately gives customers the flexibility and the choice to do what they need to do,” said Neri.

“I feel now—together with Juniper—we have a complete portfolio from silicon all the way to the services, and we will be positioned on equal footing against the biggest competitor, which obviously is Cisco. Beyond that we will have more assets than Cisco because obviously we have a cloud [with HPE GreenLake], servers, AI at scale, storage, we understand data and even on the AI-driven side, both Juniper and [HPE] Aruba [Networking] have done a better job [than Cisco], I would argue, in driving that AI integration into the solution.”

Neri, however, insists that he and the team are not focused on Cisco, but rather on building the best networking business on the planet.

“I am not worried about the competition,” said Neri. “It is up to us to execute. It is all now in our hands. There are no excuses. It is all about our execution.”

A good part of that execution is going to depend on the integration of the HPE Aruba Networking and Juniper product lines, the integration of the Juniper partner program into HPE’s Partner Ready Vantage and the incentives along with the sales and field alignment to fire up partners to take the AI high ground against Cisco in the data center networking market.

“Over the next three or four months, we are going to rationalize what are the right incentives and compensation as part of the networking track,” said Neri. “But remember one of the principles I always guide myself by is how I pay my people is the same way I want to pay our partners. There has to be 100 percent alignment because you want to have ropes to the ground on what are the top priorities within our portfolio so that together one plus one equals 11 in that journey. Therefore, everyone will be incentivized and motivated the same way.”

The Juniper acquisition ultimately opens the door to higher-margin data center services networking opportunities for HPE partners and brings Juniper into markets across the globe where the AI data center networking company did not have a big presence. All of this comes with the potential to drive big profits for partners of all stripes.

“This business has a structural margin which is way higher than the rest of the IT stack, starting with compute,” said Neri. “The reality is the ability to attach services is much higher here than commodity hardware, for example. But remember also as we incentivize partners to sell our private cloud and storage solutions, networking comes with it. So Juniper will be integrated in those offers as well so partners get the ability to multiply the benefits as well on that.”

HPE partners, for their part, said the completion of the acquisition is a monumental accomplishment that transforms HPE well beyond a storage, server and campus networking company into a full-fledged AI-driven data center networking force. They praised Neri for standing his ground on the deal in the face of opposition from the DOJ as well as an activist investor threat from Elliott Investment Management that surfaced in April. HPE in July signed a “cooperation agreement” with Elliott Management that includes changes to HPE’s board.

“Getting the Juniper deal done was a big deal,” said Brian Glahn, CEO of Blue Bell, Pa.-based Verinext, No. 101 on the 2025 CRN Solution Provider 500, which just won HPE’s Storage Solution Provider of the Year award. “Antonio is an accomplished technologist and engineer, but this puts a ribbon on a business accomplishment that very few CEOs have achieved. He is not just a technology architect and engineer, he is a visionary that just pulled off one of the largest transactions in technology history.”

Glahn, who has known Neri for the last five years, said he is flat-out “proud” of Neri for having the conviction to stay the course and complete the acquisition despite the many roadblocks he encountered.

“Antonio had strong convictions in what he believed in and stayed strong, knowing what the future was going to be,” said Glahn. “He was persistent, vigilant and tireless. A weaker leader would have failed. He accomplished a rigorous, very public transaction and now has the opportunity to integrate these enterprise-class companies and roll out a go-to-market that is the future for customers.”

Now that the deal is done, Glahn said he and his team are looking forward to providing a full end-to-end HPE solution to customers with routers, switches, firewalls, wireless, compute, storage and edge. “This rounds out the HPE offering so we can provide a full-service offering,” he said.

“This brings us a significant services play with HPE,” said Glahn. “When you are talking about complex network environments that involve security, you want to work with a partner like Verinext that has experience in complex environments across many verticals, whether it is financial, health care or another market, to present the right solution. We are already a leader with HPE in value-driven compute and obviously storage as Storage Partner of the Year. This gives us another avenue to create value in the network with our customer base with a full data center HPE investment with our clients.”

Sarah Miles, founder and CEO of Milestone Tech, Castle Rock, Colo., which was just named HPE Hybrid Cloud Solutions Partner of the Year, said she admires Neri for his ability to stay true to his strategic vision, making big investments that will benefit customers and partners over the long term rather than focusing on short-term gains centered purely on driving up HPE’s stock price.

“[I am proud] to follow a leader who is not just chasing a dollar for himself and for shareholders but who is truly doing what is right for the business, customers and partners,” she said.

Miles praised Neri for being a leader with not just a focus on today but also tomorrow with a view on the long-term health of the business.

“You have to make hard decisions for today that will pay off tomorrow,” she said. “Some leaders might look at it as, ‘I might not be in this job in two years so I don’t care how the company is doing in two years. I need to make as much money [as possible] for myself and shareholders today.’... Being willing to make the long-haul kind of investments is a totally different kind of leadership.”

An engineer at heart, Neri has fostered a spirit of engineering innovation at HPE that echoes a big part of the culture created by legendary HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard.

“Those are big shoes to fill when you are looking at how do you create a relevant business 20 years down the road,” said Miles. “It requires looking at what are the investments you have to make today to make sure you have a seat at the table in 10 years. Antonio has proven that he has got his eye further down the road than just making decisions that might make a buck this year.”

Neri, for his part, said now that the deal is done comes the “fun” part of his job, making sure that partners, customers, employees and shareholders see the full benefits of the acquisition.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “I am more committed now than I have ever been. Although I have been with the company 30 years, seven and a half years as CEO, my job is not done here. I just closed the transaction. Now I have to deliver on that promise, and it is my job with my team to deliver on that promise.”