Taking an established company in a new direction is always a challenging task. Doing so in the midst of one of the biggest evolutions the tech industry has witnessed, even more so.
Yet, that's what HPE made clear at its recent Discover event in Las Vegas. In the throes of the rapid shift to agentic AI, HPE's message was that the future opportunity for differentiation and value in these enterprise environments is through networking and everything that it enables.
To put it a different way, instead of concentrating on competing against Dell Technologies, the company seems to be more focused on competing with Cisco.
For long-time observers of the company, this development was a bit surprising. After all, the company's heritage is as the server and enterprise infrastructure part of HP that broke off on its own when HP split into HP Inc and HPE just over 10 years ago.
Like its competitors, much of HPE's recent success has arguably been due to the growing opportunity for on-prem AI infrastructure. However, this was the first Discover event where the company's Juniper acquisition was fully complete, and that company's influence on the overall message and direction of HPE was clearer at this event than it's ever been.
