HPE Completes Acquisition of SD-WAN Leader Silver Peak

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced it has completed the acquisition of Silver Peak, an SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) leader, in a transaction valued at $925 million. Silver Peak will become a part of Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. The acquisition will strengthen Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), helping to advance enterprise cloud transformation with a comprehensive edge-to-cloud networking solution covering all aspects of wired, wireless local area networking (LAN) and wide area networking (WAN).

“WAN transformation is a key component of HPE’s Intelligent Edge and edge-to-cloud vision and growth strategy,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of HPE. “Armed with a comprehensive SD-WAN portfolio with the addition of Silver Peak, we will accelerate the delivery of a true distributed cloud model and cloud experience for all apps and data wherever they live.”

“I am very excited to welcome the Silver Peak team to the Aruba family,” said Keerti Melkote, president of Intelligent Edge for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and founder of Aruba Networks. “With the evolving nature of the hybrid workplace, enterprises are looking to extend connectivity to branch locations and enable secure work-from-home experiences. By combining Silver Peak’s advanced SD-WAN technology with Aruba’s SD-Branch and remote worker solutions, customers can simplify branch office and WAN deployments to empower remote workforces, enable cloud-connected distributed enterprises, and transform business operations without compromise.”

As part of the acquisition, Silver Peak founder and CEO David Hughes, will join HPE as the senior vice president of the WAN business within Aruba.

Comprehensive WAN Portfolio to Meet Customer Needs

Enterprises are increasingly investing in SD-WAN technologies as legacy WAN architectures incur relatively high costs and are cumbersome to operate. Aruba and Silver Peak share a common vision and goal to provide simplicity, scalability, and application-awareness at the edge. Aruba’s all-in-one SD-Branch portfolio and remote worker solutions, combined with Silver Peak’s self-driving SD-WAN and WAN optimization solutions, allow Aruba to better address a wide set of customer requirements in order to capitalize on a promising market opportunity.

“I look forward to leading the new WAN business unit within Aruba and accelerating our customers’ edge-to-cloud transformation initiatives,” said David Hughes, founder of Silver Peak and senior vice president of the WAN business at Aruba. “Digital transformation, cloud-first IT architectures, and the need to support a mobile work-from-anywhere workforce are driving enterprises to rethink the network edge. The combination of Silver Peak and Aruba will uniquely enable customers to realize the full transformational promise of these IT megatrends.” 

Transaction Details

Silver Peak is another example of HPE successfully accelerating its strategy and enhancing its competitive position through acquisitions. Bringing together Aruba and Silver Peak will strengthen HPE’s Intelligent Edge business and drive significant revenue opportunities which will be accretive to the Intelligent Edge segment revenue growth and gross margin. We expect the transaction to be neutral to non-GAAP EPS in FY22^[1]. 

HPE will discuss how the integration of Silver Peak will create value and enhance growth and profitability at its Securities Analyst Meeting on October 15, 2020.