HPE-Juniper combined networking unit eyes AI-led business growth in India: COO

HPE -Juniper

HP Enterprise's acquisition of Juniper Networks will enable the combined networking business to capture a larger share of India's telecom and enterprise markets, particularly with new opportunities emerging from AI-driven use-cases, a top executive said.

Juniper and HPE's research & development (R&D) centres in India will be crucial in helping the combined entity become the world's No. 1 networking vendor, the executive said.

Manoj Leelanivas, COO, Juniper Networks

“India has been a growth vector for the company. We have already increased our R&D presence there,” Manoj Leelanivas, global chief operating officer of Juniper, told Moneycontrol in an exclusive interview.

For Juniper, India has grown much faster than other markets in the Asia-Pacific region in the past three years.

“India has been doing pretty well,” Leelanivas said, adding that HPE's acquisition gives Juniper scale and will help it tap new enterprise verticals and strengthen its telecom operator business in India and globally.

Growth opportunities

In telecom, Juniper mainly sells transport networks - which provide connectivity and bandwidth - and it has expanded into managed services, which it sells to enterprises through service providers.

“Scale is crucial here. HP has a large portfolio of enterprise customers, which will help service providers have better confidence in our solutions,” he said, adding that telecom has become a high-growth potential area.

Leelanivas said that Juniper has been working with state governments in India and is now exploring opportunities to work with large public sector companies. He sees significant opportunities from the artificial intelligence (AI) wave in India's enterprise and banking and financial space.

“Some of the large financial institutions in India are looking at building new AI clusters, especially with the advent of large language models... We have the software and the switches to build large AI clusters for some of these companies. There's a lot of interest in AI-driven stuff in India to drive growth,” he said.

With a combined portfolio, Leelanivas senses an opportunity in India’s private 5G space.

“There are assets on both sides, which can come together and provide great 5G private solutions… the offering to telecom service providers has actually gone up in India. That should expand more opportunities for us,” he said.

In January, HPE announced its definitive agreement to acquire Juniper for about $14 billion in cash. HPE chief executive officer Antonio Neri then described the acquisition as a strategic move to broaden HPE’s addressable market, especially in networking. Juniper CEO Rami Rahim will lead the combined networking business.

Juniper closed the previous financial year with $5.6 billion in revenue, while HPE’s networking business was $5.5 billion.

“It will be an $11 billion business. It's an independent division with all the engineering products, sales and services in one place. Now, we have HPE's product and go-to-market muscle. Their seller base is 10 times ours. With this, we can tap newer verticals. Our goal is to become No. 1 in networking eventually,” he said.

The executive said the combined business will continue to focus on Juniper and HPE's R&D in India. Most of Juniper's 3,600 employees in India are employed in the R&D department. The combined networking business will contribute 30 percent to HPE’s revenue and about 6 percent to profit.

“This is a high-margin business, and Antonio and Rami want to invest in it further, not reduce it. Since two-thirds of Juniper's R&D manpower, and similarly for HPE and R&D for Aruba, is in India, we plan to extend the same kind of model,” he said.