Cisco, HPE plug holes in cloud security portfolios

HPE acquires 5G provider

A week before the Axis acquisition, HPE unveiled plans to acquire Athonet, an Italian company that provides cellular technology for private 4G and 5G networks. Athonet has 450 customers, including hospitals, airports, utilities and government agencies, according to HPE.

HPE plans to offer Athonet's mobile core as part of its Aruba networking portfolio. A mobile core is a 5G core service-based architecture for fixed wireless, wireline and Wi-Fi networks, according to research firm Dell'Oro Group.

Companies deploying Wi-Fi and private 5G would use different access points feeding into the same network, said Aruba General Manager Phil Mottram. Companies would manage the network using HPE's cloud-based Aruba Central management console. Mottram declined to say when that Central version would be available.

"I think it'll happen relatively quickly," he said. "But until people go through the absolute details on it, I don't want to call [the release date]."

HPE expects to close the deal early in the third fiscal quarter, which begins in May. The company declined to provide financial details.

Late last month Cisco reported that it would join NTT, an IT infrastructure and services company, in offering enterprise technology and managed services to deploy private 5G networks for edge computing. The companies' collaboration targets the automotive, logistics, healthcare, retail and public sectors.

Raynovich said he believes companies will increasingly tie the edge to public clouds, processing data on whichever platform provides the most value.

"We believe that hybrid architectures will be the driver of the edge," he said.

Since 2019, the edge computing market has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5%. It will reach $250.6 billion globally next year, according to IDC. The United States and Western Europe account for most of the edge spending.

Antone Gonsalves is networking news director for TechTarget Editorial. He has deep and wide experience in tech journalism. Since the mid-1990s, he has worked for UBM's InformationWeek, TechWeb and Computer Reseller News. He has also written for Ziff Davis' PC Week, IDG's CSOonline and IBTMedia's CruxialCIO, and rounded all of that out by covering startups for Bloomberg News. He started his journalism career at United Press International, working as a reporter and editor in California, Texas, Kansas and Florida. Have a news tip? Please drop him an email.