HP’s $3 billion acquisition of Aruba Networks highlights the growing significance of WLAN and mobility to the networks of today and tomorrow. It comes less than three years after Cisco acquired Meraki and sets the stage for a major tussle between suppliers in the networking arena.
The purchase of Aruba Networks will help to strengthen HP’s networking business by giving it a much stronger presence in a growing and increasingly influential part of the overall networking equation. It’s also welcome news for a division that has been struggling, with HP’s networking business reporting an 11% drop in sales for the vendor’s first quarter.
In a statement about the acquisition, HP CEO Meg Whitman argued combining Aruba’s wireless mobility solutions with HP’s switching portfolio would enable it to “offer the simplest, most secure networking solutions to help enterprises easily deploy next-generation mobile networks”. Her counterpart at Aruba, Dominic Orr, described the deal as giving both companies “a tremendous opportunity to become an even greater force in enterprise mobility and networking. This transaction brings together Aruba’s best-of-breed mobility hardware and software solutions with HP’s leading switching portfolio. In addition, Aruba’s channel partners will have the opportunity to expand their businesses with HP offerings”.
There’s no doubt the WLAN market is a healthy place to be, although the rate of growth has slowed in recent quarters. IDC’s latest worldwide quarterly WLAN tracker found the enterprise segment grew at a steady rate in the fourth quarter of 2014, increasing 7.4% over the same period last year but had been subject to “a pattern of incremental growth rate decreases”. IDC estimated the enterprise WLAN market grew 8.5% for the full year in 2014, “significantly lower than the gains seen in the last few years”.
IDC found that the 802.11ac standard was helping to drive the market, experiencing adoption “at a breakneck pace in the enterprise segment”, accounting for over 30% of dependent access point shipments and 44% of dependent access point revenues. The adoption rate for 802.11ac was “noticeably faster” than the transition from 802.11a/b/g to 802.11n several years ago.
It suggested adoption was being driven by increasingly complete indoor and outdoor 802.11ac portfolios, competitive pricing relative to 802.11n access points, and the higher throughput of 802.11ac to help meet the demands of what IDC dubs ‘the 3rd Platform of IT’, built on cloud, mobility, Big Data, and social business technologies.
“Where appropriate, enterprises worldwide are seeking to move mission-critical functions from the wired network to wireless,” commented Rohit Mehra, vice president, network infrastructure at IDC. “These organisations are migrating to 802.11ac in order to experience wire-like speeds that enable a more nimble, mobile enterprise. As the 802.11ac ecosystem grows even more robust, expect this to continue for the foreseeable future.”
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