HPE to acquire SD-WAN vendor in $925m deal

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is set to buy SD-WAN vendor Silver Peak in a deal valued at $925m.

HPE CEO Antonio said in a statement that demand for edge computing has rocketed since the coronavirus outbreak.

"HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world," he said.

"With this acquisition we are accelerating our edge-to-cloud strategy to provide a true distributed cloud model and cloud experience for all apps and data wherever they live.

"Silver Peak's innovative team and technology bring critical capabilities that will help our customers modernize and transform their networks to securely connect any edge to any cloud."

Silver Peak was founded in 2004 and has raised $176m to date, according to Crunchbase.

It's most recent round of $90m came in 2018.

The vendor will be integrated into the Aruba portfolio.

Aruba founder Keerti Melkote, who is still with the business under the HPE umbrella, said: "Today's announcement comes at a unique moment for our customers, who are grappling with business recovery in the wake of the pandemic.

"The need for edge-to-cloud architectures has never been more relevant as enterprises look to extend connectivity to branch locations and enable secure work-from-home experiences.

"Silver Peak's technology transforms legacy WAN architectures to self-driving WANs, which is a perfect fit with Aruba's cloud-native, AI-driven edge services platform."

HPE said that the SD-WAN market is set to grow from $2.3bn in 2020 to $4.9bn in 2024, which equates to a CAGR of 20.5 per cent - citing research from 650 Group.

Silver Peak founder and CEO David Hughes said: "Bringing together Silver Peak's advanced SD-WAN solutions with Aruba's industry leading networking portfolio provides an unprecedented opportunity to deliver comprehensive business-driven solutions to our customers.

"The Silver Peak and Aruba teams share a common vision and goal to provide simplicity, scalability, and application-awareness at the edge.

"With Aruba's extensive go-to-market, we will further accelerate our ability to drive faster adoption of these transformational technologies. We are excited for the opportunities we will have as a combined team to accelerate innovation in this fast-growing segment of the networking market."