Wireless Access

HP in Talks to Buy Aruba Networks for Wi-Fi Infrastructure - Yahoo Finance - http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hp-talks-buy-aruba-networks-200215506.html?.tsrc=applewf

"In talks".

Hi

 

Please tell me this is a joke!!! HP buying Aruba is the death of Aruba Wireless solutions that I see as the best ones..

 

Hope this not get to an happy end.

 

Regards

i hope that's a joke,otherwise it will mark the end of a success story

Not happy about this news. It will be interesting to see how HP fouls up the Aruba product line and whether or not they will continue supporting products such as Clearpass and Airwave.

If its on yahoo finance i dont think its a joke...

Lets see what happens!

Yeah, and let's not forget how they destroyed Colubrus in order to aquire 802.11n technologies.  Yippie!!

It will be sad if that happens

Aruba Switches will practicaly dissapear:(

 

 

Yep...Thoese will be really sad news if it will happend. :( :(

I actually hope this happens.  We have a full Procurve network and love it and our Aruba wireless system.

Just like you guys, I am have no insight into this whatsoever. I heard about it right when you did and I will also hear the decision right when you will. I can see upsides to joining HP as well as staying on our (Aruba) own. 

 

No matter what happens, this community isnt going anywhere. I will fight for it through it all. There is no better community. Airheads Community is the best there is! 

 

Next week will be an exciting one... That is for SURE!

DONE.

 

Aruba is now HP..

I just bought a dozen cases of orange spray paint...

beconnect - just to clarify, a deal was made, but Aruba will still be indepedent until this summer.

all good things coming to an end :(

 

Why are you all saying this is the end?  Aruba is still focused on Customer First Customer Last, so let's not jump to conclusions.

What about airheads community what will become

The Airheads Community is not changing.

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@cappalli wrote:
The Airheads Community is not changing.

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that what we hope all.

I work for HP Networking in the sales division and one of my primary focuses is the WLAN products. I can't express in words howsay ecstatic I am about this.. We have solid WLAN products, but nothing that screams innovation or leadership like Aruba does.  I'm sure that most of the products that Aruba has will live on, we're not paying 2.7B to throw products away. If anything I think you'll see a lot of HP products go away. Clearpass and the edge switching products are some of the most exciting things to me among many other technologies, oh and the WLAN products too :)

 

It was communicated that many of the Aruba folks running the show today will be taking over for the Mobility and Campus portolios within HP. I see this as a win/win for both companies. In my opinion Aruba can't grow much more because most customers (that I speak with) want an end to end solution from one company, Aruba can only partner or be resold through one of the OEM partnerships. HP can't grow because our mobility products are lacking innovative features. Together we'll both grow!

 

It's not the end by any means. I CAN'T WAIT I'm so EXCITED!!!!

Well i hope that MAS(Mobility Access Switches) Does not dissapear... its an awsome product, just like clearpass and airwave or any aruba product.

 

Cheers

Carlos

Very well said Buckweet

Let's hope Aruba will keep rocks under HP , Still these sad news .. Where are the days of "Aruba isn't for sale " ? In order to keep your product relevant you should focus on doing it right... HP products are just not that :(

buckweet wrote:

In my opinion Aruba can't grow much more because most customers (that I speak with) want an end to end solution from one company, Aruba can only partner or be resold through one of the OEM partnerships.

Well.. here's another opinion. I work for a systems integrator whose focus is to provide best of breed to our customers. Open interfaces, standards and being vendor agnostic is the key in our business. Decision criteria cannot be just "because the label on the equipment says blaa-blaa-blaa". Of course the situation is somewhat different when you're paid by a vendor.

 

That having said I conclude that Aruba has been performing well and I just hope it stays that way too. It is also good for the whole business area to have an innovative and fast moving player in the field.

 

Opinions expressed above are my own, not necessarily the ones of my employer or my cousin's nephew.

For anyone who excite about this news as a win-win, I have a few questions: (I am both HP switch and Aruba customer)
1. Have you tried to call or open case with HP supports?
2. Have you posted your problem in HP community? Check out HP so called “Community”: http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Welcome-to-the-Community/ct-p/welcome_to_the_community
3. Have you registered for HP training with so called “Care Pack”?
Those are my frustrations when dealing with HP products.

well at least both companies already use the same forum software.

 

i think no one here can say with any certainty nothing will change or everything will change.

 

i will just wait and see what happens, hopefully it will be a change for the better.

If you see it as a partner perspective which is just an aruba partner and not hp partner this doenst look like a good news.

For HP partners only its a good news!

 

We are a Aruba partner but not HP partners and i do have lot of questions of how this will affect us.

 

Anyways i ll just hope for the best...

 

Cheers

Carlos

NightShade ... I'm feeling the same .. A lot of questions .. What should I do as Aruba partner ? Keep selling ? Supporting ? Deploying ? Until the summer ?! And than what ? There already HP in my country :(

Over the next few days, get with your account teams to have discussions about all of this. They should be able to provide fantastic FAQs that answer some of these questions. In my very humble opinion, based on the fact that Dominic and Keerti will berunning the new HP/Aruba business, I think it's safer to say that the 'Aruba Way' of doing business will be pulled in to HP, rather than the other way around. So while it would not be immediate, I would expect the HP community and support to develop along the way that Aruba handles our community and support. Dom explicitly called this out in his Keynote this week, that our partners and customers and our Community are priority number 1. This is already being discussed in the press and within the analyst community

http://www.eweek.com/networking/aruba-ceo-orr-hp-deal-will-be-good-for-company-users.html

***The continuity of leadership will be important in easing users' minds about the deal, according to Neil MacDonald, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. After the acquisition is complete, Orr and Melkote will lead HP Networking, which should give Aruba users comfort that HP will continue to innovate and scale the Aruba technology, MacDonald told eWEEK.***

 

Again, I am only a small cog in the wheel, but that is the feeling and energy I get here, even among the skeptics (which is really saying something since I've known some of these skeptics for years and they are skeptical of everything). It's obviously a big shock and we will work through it with everyone together. And as usual, all the AirHeads are awesome!

So Orr and Melkote will lead the whole HP networking? (hp swithces + aruba gear etc?)

Though they were just leading the wifi part.

 

And well we will discuss as you well said with our account team...

 

Cheers

Carlos

Obviously everything is up in the air right now (or at least from what the Public knows, including HP folks who aren't high up like me).. But it was communicated that Dominic Orr will report to Antonio Neri for the combined business unit. So it sounds like he would run the show for all of HPN. I heard from an Aruba SA that is what was communicated to them too.

 

We all know that WLAN and Switching are unifying, so it makes no sense to keep the WLAN technologies seperate from the switching folks. WLAN and switching is combined today within HP. We also have high end data center, routing and other campus products that fall under the portfolio too.

 

Once again these are just my opinions and are in no case official..

Hello buckweet

You have to look it in the point of view of an aruba partner, sure is good news for HP partners, and even end custumers i guess.

But if you see it as an aruba partner that does not sale HP Swithces for example it could be troublesome.(it could,  not sayinig it would be like that)

I just can imaging an scenario in which we are offering Aruba Wireless which is HP Wireless now, and we are also offering other brand of swithces

Now the same custumer will get the same quote but this time from an HP partner i mean one that does sell hp swithces, he will offer everything with HP.

Of course the discount marging of the second one would be greater, so we have no way to win.

So specific scenarios like that just pop into my mind.  

 

I just wanted to give you an example of what is in my mind and why i think its not soo great for actual aruba partners which does not sell HP or does not haev HP in their portafolio.

 

Anyways like i said before i ll hope for the best :)

 

 

I think every partner should look at it as an opportunity to have a leading switching and routing portfolio added to your company and thus giving you a better chance to win. I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to offer the whole portfolio if its at your disposal. This is what the merger is about, bringing awesome end to end solutions to the customers, not cherry picking and piece mealing from multiple vendors. It's hard enough to get people away from Cisco to another single vendor, it's even harder with a multi vendor solution. In the end it should be easier for you as you have one company to work with vs multiple from a partner/vendor perspective.

 

HP is the defacto #2 switching vendor out there. HP competes with Cisco everyday (and thats our goal), we're not competing head to head with the Avaya, Brocade or Juniper vendors very much. We are 9 times out of 10 on the shortlist for RFPs, those other vendors can't say that, only Cisco and HP (IMHO). Aruba is the #1 WLAN technology, but behind Cisco in market share. Aruba is the only one that competes with Cisco in WLAN like this, so I see the merger as a great thing for us all. 

 

To ease your concern in the short term until we find out what will really happen I can only point you to this statement. I believe this will become the practice once the companies merge as there's not enough HP Networking partners out there.

http://www.arubanetworks.com/aruba-and-hp/?source=homepage

 

I'm confident this is what happens, HP needs more partners and better partners. Especially ones with WLAN knowledge, we lack that severly today. Good WLAN partners are very very hard to find. 

 

As for competing against another HP partner I don't think you'll run into that much as you think. If you do then its your responsibility as a value-add to offer services above and beyond the other partner to make the customer want to pick you. As for margins that is also your responsibility to register the deal with HP to lock in higher discounts for your organization that no one else can get. I'm not sure if Aruba does this, but this is a practice that HP does to show commitment to the partner that is out there hunting for the deal. This stops freebies and sniping of customers from other partners!

 

Keep your head up everyone.!! 

 

These are my opinions

Its not that simple :/

Check your PM!

 

Cheers

Carlos