HPE Networking President Rami Rahim On Latest Self-Driving Network Innovation And Why HPE Remains ‘Years Ahead’ Of Competitors

“HPE is already leading the industry in self-driving networks,” said Rahim. “You can see it in our results. You can see it in the customers that we are winning every day. Our AI for Networks capabilities I think truly remain years ahead of the competition.”

HPE Networking Executive Vice President, President and General Manager Rami Rahim said HPE is bringing new breakthrough self-driving network innovations into the data center, including AI-based “root-cause analysis” aimed at rapidly diagnosing and proactively fixing potential data center network issues.

“The problems that once took hours if not days to diagnose can now be resolved literally in minutes or even proactively before anybody understands there is an issue,” said Rahim in a press conference unveiling the new self-driving network features to be announced at HPE Discover.

The data center AI operations capabilities combine “telemetry, application flows, operational context and historical knowledge to understand rapidly the root cause and recommend next steps,” said Rahim.

HPE is also bringing “predictive analytics” to data center infrastructure operations by “continuously analyzing telemetry across all the infrastructure,” including power, temperature, optics and system health to “identify potential issues before they become outages,” said Rahim.

“Together these capabilities bring the self-driving network from where it started inside the campus and branch for us into the data center, and that has true benefits for our customers,” he said.

HPE is, in fact, driving the Juniper Mist Marvis AI engine throughout all the HPE infrastructure layers along with making security “an essential built-in component” of any HPE networking solution, said Rahim.

“We’re connecting AIOps across the entire portfolio to create a simpler, more unified experience with the Marvis AI engine as the common thread throughout all the different layers,” said Rahim.

HPE is also making good on its pledge to bring the popular Juniper Mist AI self-driving network engine capabilities to HPE Aruba Central.

“HPE is already leading the industry in self-driving networks,” said Rahim. “You can see it in our results. You can see it in the customers that we are winning every day. Our AI for Networks capabilities I think truly remain years ahead of the competition.”

Rahim said the “starting point” for the agentic AI era begins with the self-driving network foundation because agentic AI needs “secure, adaptive connectivity across users, data, applications, clouds and, of course, data centers.”

As part of that agentic AI era architecture, HPE is integrating the HPE Juniper networking portfolio into HPE AI Factory-validated designs, essentially providing a full-stack “AI-native infrastructure with proactive operations” to accelerate AI data center deployments.

Rahim said the agentic AI era is not just “another AI adoption curve,” but a “technology spending shift” that requires a “really solid architectural foundation.”

To that point, Rahim issued a “warning” that because the market is “moving so fast” many AI projects will “fail if they are not built with the right foundation,” including the right controls and operating model.

Agentic infrastructure requires compute that’s “built for faster decisions,” data platforms that make enterprise data AI-ready, and private and sovereign controls for AI with intelligent and hybrid operations that help IT teams “manage, optimize and protect” agentic enterprises, said Rahim. “Manual effort in this stage just doesn’t cut it anymore,” he said.

“The message is simple but it’s powerful: We’re innovating across the portfolio, delivering a more intelligent, automated and secure networking experience for all of our customers in networks for AI, in AI for networks and also in security.”

Here is a look from Rahim at what he calls the latest HPE self- driving network innovations with an agentic AI architecture that “doesn’t just provide answers but AI that actually acts.”

HPE Brings New AI ‘Root-Cause Analysis’ Capabilities To Data Centers

HPE has announced new breakthrough AI “root-cause analysis” capabilities aimed at rapidly diagnosing and proactively fixing potential data center network issues.

“The problems that once took hours if not days to diagnose can now be resolved literally in minutes or even proactively before anybody understands there is an issue,” said Rahim.

HPE said the new root-cause analysis capabilities use what it calls an “advanced reasoning” agent for “high-confidence remediation” of data center networking issues.

“Think of this as Marvis AI engine for data center operations,” said Rahim.

HPE said it is employing agentic AI to continuously and autonomously reason across diverse data streams, including “millions” of technical assistance center support tickets to proactively provide “actionable remediation” in the data center network.

The AI data center networking breakthrough also leverages a contextual graph database from HPE Networking Data Center Director to provide the remediation capabilities.

New ‘Predictive Analytics’ Capabilities For Data Center Operations

HPE is also bringing new “predictive analytics” capabilities to data center operations.

The new Mist AI and Marvis AI engine capabilities will proactively analyze telemetry across AI infrastructure, including power, temperature, optics and system health to “identify potential issues before they become outages that impact” infrastructure, said Rahim.

“This leverages more than a decade of AI expertise that we have built, and it helps customers improve uptime, reduce risk and operate just far more efficiently,” said Rahim.

HPE said it is using AI and machine learning to “predict system and optics failures with a high confidence level well before they occur.”

The new AI capabilities include what HPE called “multidimensional visualization [to] prevent network outages and deliver higher application resiliency.”

HPE Brings Juniper Network Integration To HPE AI Factories, Adds New QFX5140 Switch

HPE is bringing Juniper network integration, including Juniper networking switches, as a full-stack validated solution to “scale, simplify and accelerate” HPE AI Factory deployments.

“This includes the switches themselves managed through HPE Networking Data Center Director, creating a fully integrated full- stack solution,” said Rahim.

The networking QFX switches supported include 5230, 5240 and 5250 with self-driving network operations powered by the HPE Mist AI Networking Data Center Assurance platform.

HPE also announced a new QFX5140 network switch “purpose- built for the next wave of AI infrastructure with a special focus on inferencing clusters at the edge,” said Rahim, noting that HPE is seeing “explosive growth and demand” for AI inferencing.

The 1RU 16-Terabit-per-second switch is built on the Trident 5 switch from Broadcom. It includes AI load balancing, congestion control and supports from 25 Gigabit-per-second to 800-Gigabit- per-second performance.

HPE Makes Good On Its Pledge To Bring Mist AI Marvis Capabilities To Aruba Central

HPE said it is following through on its pledge to bring the popular Juniper Mist AI self-driving network engine capabilities to HPE Aruba Central.

“Mist customers consistently tell us that these Marvis action capabilities are absolutely indispensable because they don’t just identify problems, they proactively resolve them,” said Rahim. “So now we are extending those same proven capabilities to [Aruba] Central, giving customers AI-driven insights and recommended actions across wired, wireless and SD-WAN environments that are all operated through HPE Aruba Central. Honestly, our customers have been asking for this, and I think they are absolutely delighted to see us deliver it.”

The Mist Aruba Central integration marks a major milestone for HPE, coming only 11 months after HPE acquired Juniper Networks for $13.4 billion after a battle with the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The strategy has always been to create a common self-driving experience across both HPE Mist and HPE Aruba Central powered by one AI engine that we call Marvis,” said Rahim. “We’ve already begun that journey with software cross-pollination as well as common hardware like APs [access points].”

HPE Brings Aruba CX Switching Capabilities Into Mist

HPE is bringing Aruba CX switching capabilities into the popular Mist platform with Marvis AI support for proactive troubleshooting and remediation of CX switches.

The new Mist CX switching capabilities include “AI-driven visibility before and after connection, proactive issue detection and remediation and Marvis AI assistant support for troubleshooting and operations,” said Rahim.

“I think we are making it very clear to our customers with these innovations that our platform integration strategy is not a distraction for us away from innovation, it is in fact an acceleration of innovation for our customers,” he said.

A New Unified SASE-SD-WAN Platform For Cloud-Delivered Security

HPE announced what it called a “new unified SASE platform built on HPE Networking EdgeConnect and powered by advanced firewall technology” from Juniper that converges SASE and SD-WAN into a new cloud-delivered security platform.

The new HPE SASE Orchestrator, which will be available later this year, brings SASE and SD-WAN together through one AI- native management console.

The new management console provides a “single management experience with a unified policy engine, simplified zero-trust deployments and AI-driven operations,” said Rahim. “The benefits to our customers are truly immediate here: simpler operations, faster zero-trust adoption and a better user experience through intelligent traffic steering and application-aware connectivity.”

Rahim said one of the “most powerful outcomes” of bringing HPE and Juniper together is that the combination has brought customers a “truly comprehensive” security portfolio. “Together we offer all of the critical building blocks customers need,” he said.

Bringing Self-Driving Capabilities To HPE GreenLake, Compute Ops Management

HPE is bringing self-driving network capabilities to the HPE GreenLake pay-per-use platform and HPE Compute Ops Management.
“Self-driving isn’t just a networking concept for us at HPE, it is becoming a core principle across all of HPE, especially for GreenLake,” said Rahim. “Over the past year, we have been steadily extending our networking capabilities into the broader HPE ecosystem.”

HPE first is bringing HPE Juniper data center networking integration to the HPE GreenLake platform. “This is a significant milestone because it creates a unified cross-domain operating experience across compute, storage and networking,” said Rahim. “Customers can now manage infrastructure more consistently with simplified operations and accelerate deployment of modern AI and enterprise workloads across the entire stack. I don’t think anybody else in the industry can deliver these kinds of unified solutions across the critical building blocks of IT.”

HPE also announced that Mist Networking Data Center Assurance is now integrated into HPE Compute Ops Management. “What that means is instead of managing servers and network fabrics separately customers can gain a unified operational view across both domains,” said Rahim.

“We are clearly moving fast and making very significant progress, all of it in support of the agentic infrastructure layers as well as the intelligent hybrid operations that ties it all together,” said Rahim.