HPE is heading into its annual Discover conference with a broader portfolio than in recent years and a clear push to become a go-to enterprise provider for networking and private cloud operations.
The focus will inevitably be on artificial intelligence and the new ways HPE can meet customer demand across the entire networking stack. Its $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks was completed last summer, strengthening its position as a full-stack networking provider across campus, branch, data center, routing, security, and AIOps.
HPE builds a broader networking position
The acquisition has fundamentally changed HPE’s financial profile, with networking revenue rising 151 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, including Juniper.
Not only does this beef up the company’s top line, but the networking division posted a 23.7 percent operating margin in that same quarter, far higher than the 10.1 percent in its cloud and AI division.
HPE already had some networking capabilities pre-Juniper, mostly through the Aruba Networking portfolio it acquired in 2015.
The acquisition broadened its offering, especially in AI-native network operations, which may be why HPE was willing to pay a premium of more than 30 percent for the company despite regulatory hurdles.
While HPE is still not the market leader in networking, its integration of Juniper has made it a solid second in the WLAN market behind Cisco.
According to IDC, Cisco had a 37 percent market share in the enterprise WLAN market in 2025, while HPE with Juniper sat at 19 percent. We anticipate that at Discover, HPE will highlight this growing market and its AI capabilities for hyperscalers, neoclouds, and other data center operations.
GreenLake anchors the private cloud argument
Alongside its growing networking portfolio, HPE is likely to hone in on its hybrid and private cloud management operations.
Public cloud providers, in the form of hyperscalers and neoclouds, have taken significant business from enterprises dabbling in AI tests and deployments, but as these operations move from small trials to global services, control needs to be reestablished.
This is even more pressing with the many European regulations – EU Data Act, EU AI Act, GDPR, NIS2 – which all include rules and regulations around documentation, risk management, data sovereignty, software lock-in, and third-country government access.
HPE stands to benefit from this through GreenLake, which combines public cloud with on-premises data centers. The dedicated hardware enables businesses to run high-risk AI systems and sensitive data on-prem, while also providing access to public cloud scale and marketplace services.
Morpheus strengthens hybrid cloud management
The acquisition of Morpheus in 2024 strengthens this management layer by offering an upgrade path for management, orchestration, migration, and automation.
In an age where enterprises are growing increasingly tired of cloud sprawl and multiple management solutions, HPE could be seen as a way to reduce the number of services used by combining many into an all-in-one solution.
For enterprises seeking strictly private cloud solutions, HPE has also enhanced its offering with Kubernetes management support built on ProLiant Gen 12.
What the strategy means for partners
HPE is increasingly positioning itself as a vendor capable of supporting a larger share of enterprise infrastructure spending across networking, compute, private cloud, AI operations, and management.
HPE’s acquisitions of Juniper Networks and Morpheus give partners a broader platform to address those demands under a single vendor umbrella.
Instead of stitching together networking, orchestration, cloud management, and infrastructure from several providers, partners can now position HPE as a more unified stack spanning campus and data center networking, private cloud infrastructure, AI operations, and workload management.
That matters at a time when many enterprise customers are reassessing sprawling IT environments assembled from multiple vendors, cloud providers, and management platforms.
Partners are increasingly being asked to simplify those environments while still supporting AI workloads, hybrid operations, compliance requirements, and rising data sovereignty concerns.
HPE still faces entrenched market leaders
HPE comes into Discover 2026 a larger operator, more able to stretch its portfolio across a wide range of hybrid and private cloud needs.
Data, compute, networking, security, and management under one roof can be enticing for enterprises sick of dozens of bills for services that overlap and are duct-taped together to provide a holistic service.
At the same time, HPE is not at the end of this integration journey, and it is still battling on many fronts against leaders with far more customers and revenue. Cisco leads in networking, Dell in servers, VMware and Nutanix in private cloud and virtualization, and the hyperscalers in enterprise workloads.
Still, HPE’s commitment to its channel partners as it continues to integrate its broad portfolio of solutions into a unified approach has built a dedicated channel ecosystem that will convene in Las Vegas in June to chart the next chapter of growth and success.