HPE Aruba Launches Retail-Ready Networking Portfolio That Bundles Secure Private 5g, Wi-Fi

Solution providers that cater to the retail vertical now have a specific portfolio of bundled wireless and private 5G offerings that cater to the unique needs of the dynamic retail environment from HPE Aruba Networking.

HPE Aruba Networking is getting specific with some of its biggest verticals.

The networking giant on Monday launched its retail-ready networking portfolio that includes its most modern connectivity technology, such as Wi-Fi 7, private 5G and edge computing. The portfolio can bundle access points, a brand-new cellular bridge and a compact switch with the company's flagship network management and AI platform, HPE Aruba Networking Central.

The portfolio of retail-specific offerings was designed with the needs of these customers in mind, Gayle Levin, head of product marketing, wireless for HPE Aruba, told CRN.

[Related: HPE Aruba Central Gets AI Boost As Third-Party Network Monitoring Unlocked]

The retail-ready portfolio, which was unveiled at the National Retail Federation's NRF 2025 event, includes the new HPE Aruba Networking 100 Series Cellular Bridge, a product that offers primary or backup WAN access for connectivity when fiber or broadband WAN circuits are unavailable or have failed. The Cellular Bridge, which is simple to deploy for customers, arms these end users with better resiliency for critical services such as credit card processing. The bridges can also be used to spin up connectivity quickly at new or temporary locations, such as kiosks or pop-up locations, according to HPE Aruba.

The cellular bridge serves as an on-ramp to 5G, 4G, and even 3G for customers in the event of an outage or issue with connectivity, or if they need to stand up a new location in a seamless, instant way for customers, Levin said.

"[Customers] can really use that bridge to provide that fixed wireless access so that they can start generating revenue much more quickly," she said.

Also new is the "store-friendly" HPE Aruba Networking CX 8325H is an 18-port switch that can fit into compact spaces, such as closets, with lower power and cooling requirements. This switch, part of the retail portfolio, connects with the HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen 11 server for edge computing use cases.

"There are times when the data is going to go to the cloud for AI inferencing. There are other times where it's very time sensitive, or the volume of data is so great that it's going to need to be distributed at the edge," Levin said.

The portfolio also includes the Wi-Fi 7-capable HPE Aruba Networking 750 Series of wireless access points that the company announced in 2024 that can provide secure connectivity and IoT data collection in real-time to power AI retail applications, HPE Aruba said.

"We’ve increased the capabilities on our Wi-Fi 7 APs to better support IoT … so, we've added more horsepower to the AP itself so it can run IoT applications, and we’ve added more connectivity options so that you can connect more devices to that AP itself," Levin said.

As part of the retail-ready offer, each product can be managed via the HPE Aruba Networking Central platform that now includes AI Insights to helps businesses optimize their retail curbside operations. The platform can also help businesses boost their Wi-Fi's performance outdoors and can detect unusual IoT behaviour to sniff out any potential security issues, the company said.

The Retail Opportunity

Retail has always been a significant vertical for HPE Aruba Networking. The vendor has worked with some of its largest customers in this industry, such as Home Depot and Ross, to craft the latest portfolio to help retailers modernize their networks, Levin said.

It’s a vertical that provides a big opportunity for partners, who can offer their end customers the latest retail-ready bundle or the products a la carte, the company said.

"Having [a networking solution] all from one vendor certainly makes the solution design and deployment for both partners and for the retailers much more straightforward. It also ensures that the pieces work well together, which is very important, and it improves the manageability of the entire infrastructure. Being able to manage it from a single console is incredibly powerful because you have a single view of your environment," said Dmitry Sokolov, director of industry solutions for Canadian solution provider giant Compugen Inc., a longstanding HPE Aruba partner.

Retail environments are unique in that 90 percent of the staff and IT assets reside outside of the walls of the office, Sokolov said. A strong, secure and always-on network is fundamental to any retail infrastructure, especially as these environments deploy more IoT assets and start introducing AI into their environments, he said.

"Consider an example of an electronic shelf label deployment at a grocery or hardwood store. In order to take advantage of dynamic pricing potential -- the ability for the retailer to change pricing up and down based on demand and according to marketing conditions -- a typical grocery or hardware store will have anywhere between 10,000 to 50,000 electronic shelf labels, which are essentially IoT devices that we need to securely connect the store network right in order to receive the data from different systems … it's a very unique challenge that you wouldn't have in a corporate setting," Sokolov said.

These dynamic environments are also increasingly relying on private cellular and 5G for instant connectivity, he added.

"If you [think about] the pop-up store example, how often does an IT department in a non-retail environment is asked to set up an externally accessible to the customer Wi-Fi, mini office, for a month, and do this 50 times across the country during the holiday season," Sokolov said. "Cellular is very important for retail to ensure business continuity."

HPE had previously announced that it would be expanding its focus on delivering wireless networking for the retail industry and the company has plans to replicate its success with packaged networking offerings in other verticals as well, such as healthcare, Levin said.