CRN Exclusive: Aruba CEO On HPE Integration, Massive Growth And Gaining Market Share Against Cisco

Orr On The Record

After decades of building and growing various networking companies, Dominic Orr found his home as the CEO of Aruba Networks in 2006. Orr took Aruba from being a relatively unknown vendor to its first IPO and was on pace to capture nearly $1 billion in annual revenue before being purchased by Hewlett-Packard in May 2015 for $3 billion.

Sixteen months after the deal closed, Orr said Aruba's integration with HPE is making waves in the networking industry and channel community. Orr talks to CRN about why the merger was successful, winning against network rival Cisco, and why channel partners should be pumped for the future.

What makes the integration of Aruba and HPE product lines so fruitful for channel partners?

Aruba brings to the table highly scalable, resilient, enterprise-class wireless technology. We bring mobile, security management and mobility management tools and software, and very intelligent location-based mobile engagement systems. On the HP side is a very comprehensive switching portfolio and strong capabilities in software-defined networking, open-based systems and deep and broad capability building networking ASICs.

When you look at the two product lines, they're almost a perfect complement of one another. This is not just one company leveraging the other's portfolio, it's really combining the portfolio with almost zero overlap. It makes a very strong end-to-end, cloud and mobile-first portfolio that channel partners can differentiate themselves with better than anyone in the industry.

Where there any glitches during the Aruba-HPE integration?

It would not be sincere to tell you there were no glitches, but the glitches were more in -- How do you put the IT systems together? How do you put the supply chain system together? How do you put the sales order systems together? -- and so on.

We're really running as a pretty free subsidiary. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we are merging two businesses – the switching and the mobility business.

How was Aruba able to increase HPE's networking business by 57 percent during its second quarter?

Aruba channel partners had been selling just wireless with other companies' switching, and traditionally Aruba – because of the target market – our install base did not have HPE switching. This situation has really led to growth because now everybody's catalog is bigger and now there's more than double the number of partners that are carrying the catalog. Channel partners that were selling switching and other forms of wireless now have the complete portfolio. … Plus, in some geographies like China our growth has been significantly impressive.

Where is Aruba gaining momentum against Cisco?

We continue to gain market share in the mobility space because now we have access to larger accounts through HPE, who has very good relationships at the CIO, CEO level. Another area where we're winning market share is networks that require real-time prioritization of trafficking.

Also, having a single architecture in terms of wireless deployment, mobility management and secure access management that can scale from one user to 10,000 users in the campus is one of our strengths. Our competitor has to struggle with three or four different architectures and products.

Those companies that require the scale and the unified management -- that's an area where we are winning market share significantly. Once we get on a level playing field and compete on product features, technology road map, and engineering service capability, Aruba almost always wins.

What's the big take-away for channel partners in the new joint HPE-Aruba Partner Ready for Networking Program?

We're excited that we have a very comprehensive and unified partner program for people for the whole networking catalog -- ranging from the mobile edge to the data center.

But even more exciting is most of our partners are looking at not just being able to sell more components but be able to put components together to deliver a managed network service.

How big of an opportunity is there for the channel to deliver these network services?

It's huge. Because of the complexity and new technologies, not every organization is ready to retrain their own technical staff so customers are demanding that channel partners give them a managed service. This area is the future where a lot of channel partners will play.

How significant is Aruba's new networking consumption model for channel partners?

The idea is I pay for usage or device per month or square meter of coverage per month – there's a lot of different models being developed and a lot of our partners are creating a competitive advantage by customizing technologies to a model that is consumed differently depending on the industry. There's a whole new opportunity for creating more margin for our partners because the benefit of this consumption model and managed service model is giving them highly profitable recurring revenue.

Should longtime Aruba channel partners be concerned at all about change now as a HPE-Aruba partner?

Going forward the industry will change, there will be new market segments that will come and go, but partners can count on the principle that Aruba will always work on differentiated features and always maintain the intimacy from a people perspective and maintain our open system posture. Those are things channel partners can count on for years to come.