“All these vendors have competing solutions with HP and Dell is the one which has a broader scale of end-to-end enterprise infrastructure competition,” he adds.
“A bigger question remains here on how HP is going to manage the expectations of these partnering vendors and associated customers.
“However, if the Aruba unit is kept as a separate entity under the HP Enterprise Company umbrella for the next few years, it could help to sort out this issue.”
HP had previously acquired Colubris and H3C to strengthen their networking portfolio, however Goswami says they failed to position the company as market leader in networking.
Also, acquiring a WLAN vendor creates a disruption in their existing wired networking portfolio; one key example is the story of Juniper – Trapeze.
“Aruba brings onto the table innovative and disruptive mobility solutions, however they have struggled with their mobility access switching portfolio,” Goswami adds.
“As it holds true for all acquisitions - with HP's ongoing R&D commitments, the Aruba offerings which requires for more R&D investments, need to be well justified and mapped into HP's solutions.
“That could be confusing for Aruba's customers.”
In many cases, Goswami says Aruba partners are already carrying competing wired networking products; positioning HP in parallel may become a challenge for those partners and create a conflict.
“This has in some cases helped competing vendors to win some of those partners support,” he adds.