Synergy in M&A market. If this is true then HPE is gearing for Cisco. 50% of telco business is run on Juniper. It will be interesting to see, if HPE does acquire Juniper, how this will impact their roadmap. But HPE has storage, HPC (supercomputing) and compute and JNPR has networking, actual AI driven enterprise solutions (unlike Cisco's ppt AI) and quantum crypto VPN. Could be a win-win if the M&A is managed well.
https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/hewlett-packard-enterprise-near-deal-to-buy-juniper-networks-6995a464
40 replies (most recent on top)
Love the RPN reference!!! but really, and outdated server (and i guess wireless) company buying a company specializing in inter DC L3 transport on a provider network..... Is going to go make a ki-ling in AI!!!! I am laughing so hard along with the rest of the market! I wont compare to Cisco decisions (or just ELT guessing at the market) but this one is just classic!
You cannot have growth without research , innovation and meritocracy.
If Cisco had meritocracy 95% of it's software staff would be in the unemployment line. Be careful what you wish for.
New HPE and JNPR will buy Cisco in a couple of years.
Two marginal companies which will go from both being in debt to being in extreme debt will completely overtake Cisco in a couple (literally defined as TWO) years? Even if Juniper's networking business grows slightly more than ten fold on AI they'd have to grow their revenue almost 22 fold just to break even with current Cisco, and to do that you'd have to convince a massive number of customers to swap out everything they own and bet on what are for this scale of investment unproven technologies. HPE has blown "big" contracts far smaller in scope than this in the past. As it is I haven't been able to send e-mail to a number of businesses for many years because those businesses' outsourced e-mail provider's "AI" found some unspecified word it didn't like and bounced it.
If you're going to proclaim Cisco's imminent death show me an ROI analysis on networking expenditures at HPE that will justify going out and replacing everything so they'll have the money to buy Cisco. BTW, I work in secure environments so having any external company try to monitor, control and capture my data is a non-starter.
only thing worse for Juniper to be bought by HPE is to be bought by Cisco, either way a slow journey to the grave for a good product, welcome!
Cisco ELT is a consultant driven monkey-see, monkey-do operation. As a result you can expect to see CSCO acquire another large company it is unable to run or successfully integrate in response to HPE.
New HPE and JNPR will buy Cisco in a couple of years. Before HPE buying into Cisco, 80% Cisco headcounts will be on bora bora. Financial world using bora bora instead of LR.
@2rwe+1qu4OmwB If HPE and JNPR can get this merger to work then you may not have to wait for too long. Another 3-4 years max in case they are successful and drive the final nail in the Cisco coffin. Cisco is an elephant in quicksand , don’t know how to get out of a gravity induced death spiral. They are desperately laying people off every quarter to stay in the black because they know that they cannot evolve and compete technically. The ELT is too incompetent to steer the ship off the underwater reefs. And their layers of directors and managers are su-king the company dry while adding absolutely no value at all. Cisco presales is a pool of incompetent nincompoops most of whom cannot even configure a router that they try to sell themselves.
You cannot have growth without research , innovation and meritocracy. Cisco has those only on PowerPoints. Rest are marketing hypes and blatant lies on LinkedIn.
“Best way our of this mess would be if someone would buy this dumpster fire of Cisco”
Why would anyone be doing that? The cracks will open in Feb on the earnings calls and bigs LR announced after. 10% at leasts. Again in Octobers. market will realise that Cisco is not a SW business.
As a Jnpr fan, I am looking forward to see how cisco get fu$ked with this merger.
Best way our of this mess would be if someone would buy this dumpster fire of Cisco
Chuck needs to get fired ASAP to have any chance delaying the end of Cisco
Cisco do AI? In what? They just tag the words in front of anything! OSPF will be AI enabled if you listened to the BS from Cisco!
AI has been going on for many companies for many years even way before UBER even went to IPO. Why Cisco is talking about AI suddenly, there is gold rush in AI, Cisco wants to be part of it. Cisco's AI is Building a house on top of the sand.
@1qap+1qu4OmwB agree 100%. Cisco’s AI is just on ppt and LinkedIn posts. Juniper actually has been selling AI driven solutions for the last couple of years. HPE is ever active in HPC driven AI. They have something that Cisco will never have as long as their layers of directors, managers and VPs keep polluting the environment. HPE and Juniper maybe legacy but they are at least trying to change. Cisco on the other hand, is sleep walking towards being flushed down the toilet.
HPE is already in AI. What are you talking about? 7 layers of OSI. HPE is at the 1st layer of AI already. Cisco has no clue and is a joke when it comes to AI. Taping names of other AI leaders in earnings call does not make Cisco an AI company.
@1mnd+1qu4OmwB At least HPE and JNPR are trying to get into AI business stupidly and have solutions to prove that unlike Cisco. That is what they have got going for them as opposed to DISCO.
50% of telco business is run on Juniper.
So the companies providing sewage pipes like Verizon and AT&T whose revenues have dropped significantly over the past five years and where HPE systems and computing skills are likely far less valuable than they would be to a data center where Arista is supposed to be strong.
Cisco is so far behind in tech that it boggles the mind out of our galaxy.
Yeah! HPE has PA-RISC. Or it was Alpha? Or was it was Itanium? Does anyone remember the DEC effort to develop an ECL chip for MIPS? HP-UX, VMS, Ultrix, IRIX, and more. Apollo Computer, Compaq bringing DEC and Tandem along for the ride, SGI among many more. Aruba has been replacing everything HP developed or got through other acquisitions like 3Com. HPE, be it developed in house or acquired, is where a lot of tech has gone to die.
Let's look at the financials. Note that HPE is paying $14B for Juniper which is more than 2/3rds of HPE's market cap or almost half its annual revenue to buy Juniper which has less than 1/5th the revenue and less than 1/6th the EBITDA of HPE:
Market cap:
CSCO $202.81B
HPE $20.98B
JNPR $11.74B
Revenue(ttm):
CSCO $58.03B
HPE $29.13B
JNPR $5.65B
Operating Margin(ttm):
CSCO 30.20%
HPE 7.97%
JNPR 10.74%
Cash on Hand and Debt (both mrq):
CSCO $23.9B $8.73B
HPE $3.57B $13.67B
JNPR $1.38B $1.78B
EBITDA:
CSCO $18.09B
HPE $5.12B
JNPR $0.824B
Five year revenue growth (total, not annualized) for Juniper was around 20% versus 15% for Cisco and a net LOSS of 5% for HPE. Given the ratio of revenue between HPE and Juniper it's possible the combined company could still produce negative revenue growth going forward.
Like Cisco, HPE and Juniper are legacy companies in legacy businesses and as a customer, investor and one who enjoys technology I can't find anything here to be excited about.
@1tuo+1qu4OmwB “ HPE gets its act together? Ha Ha Ha, never going to happen... Do you even aware ”
“Are” you even aware…. Grammar is important.
None of us have a crystal ball. Whereas history teaches us a lesson, it does not predict the future. All we can do is go by current trend and data. When Juniper bought Mist, many sn-------g Cisco pundits, basking in self importance , predicted a quick death going by historical trend of Juniper acquisitions. What happened in reality is a very successful merger and Cisco getting kicked out of established enterprise accounts by Juniper due to Mist AI. Trend says HPE is into HPC driven AI. Juniper is into AI driven networks and post quantum security . Any credible industry forecast says these markets have multi billion dollar markets coming up in the next 5 years. Cisco’s trend in innovation during last 10 odd years shows all of us where it’s going - only one place to go when one has circled the drain for so long. If karma is a b!tch then gravity is a sl-t.
If HPE and JNPR can get their act together then the demise of Cisco - especially on the
back of that inflated $28 billion price tag for Splunk - is within another couple of years.
Cisco is so far behind in tech that it boggles the mind out of our galaxy.
HPE gets its act together? Ha Ha Ha, never going to happen... Do you even aware that how many those in-comptent execs (like CISCO's) are camping in there? What have they done anything other than cut/re-org in the last 10 years?
HPE is a collections of failures for the last 10 years (if not longer) - hate to say that. Good Luck, ex-CISCO folks in Juniper. They will cut/cut/cut and close it like their other business.
@kob+1qu4OmwB, I may be old, but you can't call me Grandpa. I taught my kids manners and they taught their kids the same. Do you know how to use an RPN calculator? My wife, kids, and grandkids all do and most of them felt like the RPN calc was easier and more efficient to use than a standard calc.
My comment was more about how HP used to make quality stuff like calculators & printers before they decided to make cheap commodity cr-p that stops working in just a year or two forcing you to buy another one. My TI calculators I bought before the HP-15C barely made it though a school year, not to mention the same applied to the TI calculators I had to buy for my kids in school because the school "required" a specific model because teachers couldn't learn how to work every possible model but had to be able to assist kids in using them in class rather than depending on parents to teach their kids how to use the product they bought.
Sort of like how Cisco started out being technologically agnostic and allowed it's employees to use whatever computer (Windows, OS X, or Linux) and whatever software package that enabled them to do their jobs more effectively before becoming process and policy driven where you have to use XYZ OS with ABC software bogged down with a boatload of monitoring software.
Times have changed. I can't wait for you to get to my age and you have to deal with vastly newer technology and younger people who ridicule you for getting old since you can't avoid it. My HP-48SX in college had more internal memory than my first computer had, and the HP had 2 bays for a 128K RAM card and a "Solve Equation" ROM that had many needed formulas to make college courses so much easier. Now apps on cell phones can do the same thing.
Interesting, I still have my 28s and 15C, both bought in the 80s. Still use the 15C from time to time. Also did board test development on the HP 3070 when they first came out. Love me some HP.
Arista was started by former Cisco Execs so I don't think Arista would want to be acquired by Cisco.
These poor third world mentality when they have 2 dollars in their pocket, all they know is buy buy buy.
First treat your employees right, stop laying off people.
“ If HPE buys JNPR, Cisco will buy Arista. T-t-for-tat. Cisco wins.”
Relative Market Caps:
JNPR - 11.74B (post announcement)
SPLK - 28B
ANET - 76B
CSCO - 202.81B
Splunk was a stretch at 28B (and most of the money is being borrowed). Cisco isn't acquiring Arista.
All you know is buying, the game of buying is over. Everyone else is far more advanced out there than Cisco. It would be uncivilized for Arista acquired by Cisco.
Arista does not need Cisco.
If HPE buys JNPR, Cisco will buy Arista. T-t-for-tat. Cisco wins.
Point of order:
HP calculators (running RPN, of course !) were used by NASA during the Apollo program.
So all you sn-t-nosed kids can just put that in your back pocket …
too many old gee-zers at Cisco, one of my managers was great grandpa, he was 70+, many of them looking forward to have 3 generations working at Cisco, speaking of nepotism and tribalism.
" Cisco mainstream SE/SAs, except for a select few, are braindead wasters. They won’t know AI if it hit them on their head. As an example, I saw the SE director from UK whooping on LinkedIn about how everything at Cisco is about Generative AI about six months ago. This is what a poor sh!t show Cisco is.
They have got immeasurably incompetent clowns as mouthpieces ( or directors) to the outside world who are not afraid to embarrass themselves publicly to get some brownie points from management. AI in this environment where brown nosing above quality is important, will have a very quick dusty death. There is no technical competence at all among these ignorant id--ts and nor are they interested in acquiring any technical acumen. Just humbugs and marketing hype artists gunning for a paycheque via su-king up. Cisco should do what Juniper did last October: fire most of these incompetent directors who never address a live customer session.
If HPE and JNPR can get their act together then the demise of Cisco - especially on the back of that inflated $28 billion price tag for Splunk - is within another couple of years. Cisco is so far behind in tech that it boggles the mind out of our galaxy.
A bunch of incompetent buffoons with director and manager titles, managed by even more incompetent hordes of VPs and an impotent ELT, has written the obituary of a once great tech company."
GREAT POST! AMEN!!!
Cisco mainstream SE/SAs, except for a select few, are braindead wasters. They won’t know AI if it hit them on their head. As an example, I saw the SE director from UK whooping on LinkedIn about how everything at Cisco is about Generative AI about six months ago. This is what a poor sh!t show Cisco is.
They have got immeasurably incompetent clowns as mouthpieces ( or directors) to the outside world who are not afraid to embarrass themselves publicly to get some brownie points from management. AI in this environment where brown nosing above quality is important, will have a very quick dusty death. There is no technical competence at all among these ignorant id--ts and nor are they interested in acquiring any technical acumen. Just humbugs and marketing hype artists gunning for a paycheque via su-king up. Cisco should do what Juniper did last October: fire most of these incompetent directors who never address a live customer session.
If HPE and JNPR can get their act together then the demise of Cisco - especially on the back of that inflated $28 billion price tag for Splunk - is within another couple of years. Cisco is so far behind in tech that it boggles the mind out of our galaxy.
A bunch of incompetent buffoons with director and manager titles, managed by even more incompetent hordes of VPs and an impotent ELT, has written the obituary of a once great tech company.
Good you're enjoying your HPE calculator, you sounded like an old ge---r, can i call you a grandpa?
@cfk+1qu4OmwB, I love my HP 15C calculator. I’ve had it since 1987! I was thrilled to get a 32-bit emulator version of it to run on Window & later on OS X, & even on iOS. When 32-bit app support died, finding a port of it for 64-bit arch was challenging.
The later HP-28C/S & 48S/SX were nice, almost too complicated & bulky for anything other than college courses.
Why HP still sells the 12C Financial calc & not the 15C Scientific one I don’t know. It’s the same form factor, case, etc., but with different keys/labeling & software. There’s no need to update the software if you’re not updating the hardware, & judging by the fact that TI still sells the same graphing calc for decades at a time, what’s the point in changing them up?
Let HPE buy Juniper......good for them. They'll get a bunch of ex-Cisco wannabe manager/Dirs/VPs.....which means those ex-Cisco folks hopefully won't come back to Cisco (which seems to be common....Juniper is where bad Cisco managers go to get a executive promotion, then come back in a few years to pollute the Cisco pool again).
Reverse Polish Notation forever, baby !!!
Ah but HPE isn't a "software" company with huge ARR goals! I'm not an HPE fanboy but at least they remember that they are in the computing business.
HPE bought 3Com long ago. Way before Cisco there was 3Com.
Founder of 3Com came from MIT invented ethernet technologies.
And HPE is big on AI with those supercomputers.
Their routers, switches, access points, etc... aren't even called "networking." HPE has been trying to do networking for decades and at least financially Juniper is severely under performing Arista and Cisco. To quote the band X-C, "could be heaven, could be he-l in a cell for two."
And HPE is big on AI with those supercomputers. Unlike Cisco where AI is on ppt only. They are targeting Juniper’s Mist and self healing solutions - a successful integration will blow Cisco’s enterprise business out of the water. Cisco’s SE community has no clue what AI is and how to talk about it to customers. Zombie company alert