HPE Adds AI-powered Automation to Third-Party Devices

HPE has announced a series of significant updates to its HPE Aruba Networking Central, aimed at improving network observability, security, and configuration management through AI-powered automation. The platform is sold as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution and as part of the HPE GreenLake for Networking subscription.

The latest updates emphasize the company’s strategy to integrate AI capabilities into network management. It offers tools that help organizations monitor, optimize, and secure their networks across various devices, including third-party hardware.

I received a pre-briefing from Alan Ni, HPE’s senior director of edge marketing. Ni told me that this latest announcement culminates in monthly sprints this summer.

“We’re moving on to a third generation of Central,” he told me. “We’ve been doing a lot on the AI side since we moved Central to the GreenLake data lake several years back. Many of those outcomes were in the alerting and insight area of AI. With this release, there are significant changes in speed and the breadth of coverage we’re doing from an AI perspective.”

From an industry perspective, using sprints to deliver innovation shows how far networking has come with respect to cloud-native capabilities. Historically, network vendors would deliver updates at best one to two times per year through operating system updates. This would be time-consuming and disruptive. Now that more and more functionality has been moved into the cloud, innovation can be delivered faster and more often.

What Did HPE Update?

Ni shared the scope of the HPE updates to Central, and mentioned companies such as The Home Depot, Lending Tree, and Blue Diamond Growers all use HPE Aruba Networking Central.

This update includes:

Expansion of AI-Powered Insights

The company says Networking Central’s updated AI models now provide deeper insights and more accurate network optimizations. HPE is enhancing its AI capabilities with data from a rapidly expanding customer base, and the company currently monitors more than 4.7 million devices with more than 1.6 billion endpoints, with each endpoint having somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen pieces of anonymized telemetry. According to Ni, those devices and endpoints produce many petabytes of data, enabling HPE to finetune AI models to deliver improved recommendations, automate troubleshooting, and optimize network performance across diverse hardware environments.

Third-Party Device Monitoring

One enhancement that jumped out in this release is the integration of OpsRamp, acquired by HPE in 2023. OpsRamp’s technology enables HPE Aruba Networking Central to monitor devices from third-party vendors like Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Palo Alto Networks. This feature reduces visibility gaps in networks that rely on multiple vendors, improving the ability to troubleshoot and optimize across a heterogeneous network environment.

Expanded Digital Experience Monitoring

The updated platform also includes enhanced DEM capabilities. Integrating HPE Aruba Networking User Experience Insight (UXI) monitoring into the platform makes tracking service level agreements (SLAs) from the user to the application easier. With this integration, HPE says it now provides end-to-end monitoring and ensures network performance meets user expectations from a single interface.

Improved Configuration Management

HPE says the platform now supports a unified configuration model for HPE Aruba Networking’s wired, wireless, and gateway products, which should streamline network management. This change, introducing hierarchical configurations and more than 90 new APIs, translates to more accessible and faster deployment, updates, and management of networks at scale. Ni noted that companies with large and complex networks, such as Henkel AG & Co., can now use these capabilities to manage their global networks across hundreds of locations in hours, improving efficiency and reducing operational complexity.

Enhanced Security and IoT Monitoring

Building on the company’s focus on security, HPE Aruba Networking Central introduces AI-powered security observability and monitoring features designed to address emerging risks, including those related to IoT devices. The platform includes network detection and response (NDR) capabilities, which help organizations detect and respond to behavioral anomalies, a critical function as IoT devices proliferate across enterprise networks.

AI-Powered Automation: Part of a Broader AI Networking Strategy

HPE says introducing these features is part of its broader strategy to push AI-powered automation into network management. For example, in 2024, HPE Aruba Networking expanded its AIOps capabilities by integrating GenAI models within HPE Aruba Networking Central.

These GenAI models assist network managers by providing real-time insights and recommendations, which enables more autonomous management of network configurations, security policies, and performance optimization.

Some Final Thoughts

HPE’s latest updates to the Aruba Networking Central platform underscore its commitment to AI-driven automation and enhanced security in network management. By integrating third-party device monitoring, improving configurability, and expanding observability, HPE hopes to provide enterprises with the tools they need to manage increasingly complex network environments.

These updates can improve operational efficiency and enhance the security and user experience—vital support for organizations as they navigate the evolving AI and IoT landscapes.

The company says that these updates to HPE Aruba Networking Central will be available in public preview starting next month, with some features, including third-party device monitoring and the integration of UXI capabilities, becoming available by the end of the year.

Zeus Kerravala is the founder and principal analyst with ZK Research. Read his other Network Computing articles here.