Trends Report

Brief: HP's Acquisition Of Aruba Networks Reignites Its War With Cisco

Networking Is The Path To HP's Growth If The Company Doesn't Repeat Past Mistakes

March 25th, 2015
Andre Kindness, Principal Analyst
Andre Kindness Principal Analyst
With contributors:
Glenn O'Donnell , Vanessa Wegner

Summary

In 2009, Mark Hurd, a former CEO of HP, responded to Cisco CEO John Chambers' release of Cisco's UCS line with the acquisition of 3Com. While many expected an all-out war, the few early battles quickly petered out. Under Meg Whitman, HP has reignited the war with Cisco with its $2.7 billion dollar acquisition of Aruba Networks. HP's future depends on a successful networking portfolio, as the network is a key element in any enterprise's business technology agenda. But this isn't without risk for infrastructure and operations (I&O) professionals, who have seen HP try this before with Colubris Networks and then again with 3Com. In this brief, Forrester explains how this deal affects HP and Aruba I&O customers, the changes in original equipment manufacturing (OEM) relationships, and the strategies necessary to mitigate the risk of investing in the wireless solution from either company.

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