Latest / Technology Now / What does networking look like today? HPE Discover Barcelona 2025

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What does networking look like today? HPE Discover Barcelona 2025 · Technology Now

• RAMI RAHIM  I joined Juniper pretty much 30 years ago and  I had a very simple role back then in the Silicon team developing, you know, or helping verify, actually small logic blocks for our asics back then. But then I took, um, a career path through technology. I was a silicon engineer. I moved into management, then I moved into product management, then I moved into general management. Then I became the CEO, of Juniper. Uh, was, I was very humbled and honored to have that responsibility. Okay. And I worked my way up from, you know, uh, the most junior person on the team to CEO. MICHAEL BIRD Sot hat was Rami Rahim, President & General Manager of HPE Networking and our guest for today’s episode of Technology Now. SAM JARRELL Wow. That’s quite an impressive story to working his way up to the top of a company. Shall we get into the episode so we can hear more from Rami? MICHAEL BIRD Absolutely. I’m Michael Bird. SAM JARRELL I’m Sam Jarrell. And welcome to Technology Now from HPE MICHAEL BIRD Welcome back to Technology Now and our second episode from HPE Discover Barcelona 2025. We’re in a very big, noise room with lots going on. SAM JARRELL Yeah, that’s right, Michael. It’s the Discover Showcase. HPE Discover Barcelona is a two-day Event in Barcelona, Spain, where industry professionals, HPE Partners and Sponsors can all come to share ideas, and make new connections. And, given that you said we are interviewing Rami Rahim this week, I assume we are talking all about networking? MICHAEL BIRD We absolutely are. Rami was the CEO of Juniper Networks, who became part of HPE earlier this year. SAM JARRELL So now we have both HPE Juniper Networking and HPE Aruba Networking in our portfolio… what’s the difference? MICHAEL BIRD That is an excellent question, but I want to leave it up to our guest to explain that, as it is his area of expertise! Earlier during HPE Discover Barcelona, I had the chance to talk to Rami Rahim, Executive Vice President and also President and General Manager of HPE Networking. MICHAEL BIRD Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Now, um, you've just finished your speech. Yes. How did it go? RAMI RAHIM I think it went great. Um, I got a lot of positive feedback and I think it comes down to the fact that when you really, truly believe in what you're talking about. In this case, the many great innovations and technologies that we have been working on since the close of this acquisition. It comes across. And I think it sort of came across here. MICHAEL BIRD Absolutely. And I believe this is your first HP Discover. How are you finding it? RAMI RAHIM Actually, it's my second HPE, discover. I did attend last year's, but as a guest because the deal had not closed yet. In disguise. In disguise, actually not so disguised. But uh, this year definitely. Hits different because I'm an HPE employee and obviously I had much more access, a lot of great meetings, customer conversations, uh, the big stage appearance and we're not done yet because there's more to come tomorrow. MICHAEL BIRD And, and what has been your highlight so far of, of HP Discover Barcelona? RAMI RAHIM I, I'm a geek. I love technology, I love product. So the highlight for me are just the products, the technology, not just within HPE networking, but if you walk on the show floor here and you see the unbelievable technology across compute, storage, networking, hybrid cloud software, artificial intelligence, it's pretty amazing. It's like you are a kid in the candy store and of course in HPE networking, we have been working very hard since the close and combining our portfolios and doing something that's really special for our customers. And the progress we've made is… is pretty amazing. MICHAEL BIRD Um, alright, let's clear some common misconceptions because I think when a lot of people think of networking. They think of wifi, but networking is far more than just wifi, right? RAMI RAHIM Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, networking is everything. And now networking to HPE, networking. Is wifi wired switching, security wide area networking, data center networking, ai data center networking, um, routing infrastructure solutions. It's a full stack of capabilities and solutions. I mean, we have the ability to address any networking use cases and any security embedded in networking use case for practically any industry cloud providers, telcos, enterprises, you name it MICHAEL BIRD What are the different categories of networks that we have? RAMI RAHIM I think the best way to think about it is in four distinct technology pillars that, uh, we really focus on at HPE Networking. There's data center networks, of course. Routing infrastructure solutions that are the most mission critical network carrying wide area network for, uh, telcos and large cloud providers and even enterprises that choose to run their own wide area networks, camps and branch wired and wireless infrastructure, and of course security, which includes all aspects of security embedded in networking king. MICHAEL BIRD So what does the HP networking portfolio look like and how has it changed since the acquisition? RAMI RAHIM Well it's, it's a totally different, um, business right now. It's far more comprehensive in terms of what it looks like. I mean, it looks awesome. first. Second, I think it's good to start with our vision. Our vision is around self-driving networks, networks that truly have the ability to delight customers or those that use the network to do practically anything today. And network operators, the heroes. That are running these networks each and every day. So the best way to, achieve that objective is through a self-driving networks, networks that essentially configure themselves, run themselves, diagnose themselves, optimize themselves. You know, when there is an issue that will self remediate and address these issues well before anybody that uses a network has the ability to even detect that there was a problem to begin with. That is the vision, and the good news is that that vision. It's becoming more and more of a reality because of the technology that we have now inherited from both HPE Aruba Central and also Juniper Mist. MICHAEL BIRD And that's something that, I don't know, 10 years ago just wasn't even conceivable, that sort of self-driving networks. It was very labor intensive. Very just hard to wrap your head around RAMI RAHIM The progress that has been made towards the vision of a self-driving network over the last 10 years has been staggering. starting with, you know, data collection. To insights to assisted self-driving. And now with AG agentic, really the opportunity is completely self-driving, where the network operator can literally take their hands off the wheel mm-hmm. And let the network run itself. MICHAEL BIRD Wow. So do the portfolios of, um, HPE Aruba networking and HPE Juniper networking, do they overlap at all RAMI RAHIM I mean, there are areas where if you look at it from a distance, they might look like they overlap. And the one obvious area that you know, customers ask me about would be in the campus and branch where h HP Aruba Networking and HPE Juniper Networking have access points, have campus switches. But if you take a closer look, really these two platforms have unique strengths. You know, mist was developed as a cloud platform, and Aruba Central has much more of a diverse deployment model from virtual private cloud. On-prem, et cetera. So together we can support every single deployment model under the sun. And the beautiful thing, this is what I talked about in my keynote just today, is that the approach we're taking is to cross pollinate the best of each platform onto the other. And in so doing, we're accelerating the pace of innovation for all of our customers without leaving any customer left behind. That message, by the way, was incredibly well received, and that's what we're executing on. You know, some customers were saying, well, that's years out. No, it's not. Years out, we're actually introducing the first set of microservices that we're cross-pollinating just weeks away from here. MICHAEL BIRD You've worked in the world of networking for a fair few years. how have you seen networking change in the last 30 years? RAMI RAHIM I mean, I had a front row seat way back when I joined Juniper at the explosion of the internet. Back then, there was nothing in the industry that could keep up with the pace of growth. Of the internet, and this is why many customers had no choose, but to bet on the small upstart, a startup company like Juniper that could, uh, develop the technology that can keep up with the scale of what was happening in the network. But I mean, the network has evolved a lot since then. We've gone through 'em, you know, the internet to mobile computing to cloud computing, and now we're in the era of AI and as important as the network back in the era of the internet. Networking now in the era of AI is even more important. I mean, it really is an exciting time to be in networking today just because of how critical everybody sees the network is to practically doing anything today. MICHAEL BIRD How has AI impacted the way that we think about our networks? You know, how we architect our networks, how we manage, maintain our networks? Yeah, I mean, RAMI RAHIM AI workloads are just fundamentally different. The amount of pressure that networks are feeling experiencing right now because of AI workloads both within the data center and in the wide area is stunning. And this is why some of the technologies that we've sort of been dabbling in the labs like liquid cooling technology and co package optics have now moved from a realm of NICE to have into the realm of must have, like the new QFX 52 50 switch we just announced. Uh, over a hundred terabytes per second in a single switch, a hundred percent liquid cooled. Wow. And we were able to tap into the liquid cooling capabilities that HPE has developed for dec decades as part of the supercomputing technology that, uh, you know, uh, HPE has been innovating in and apply it to this switch gives us a significant advantage in the market. MICHAEL BIRD A hundred terabytes is, it's a lot staggering throughput. a lot. Absolutely. RAMI RAHIM There will be customers that will need even more than MICHAEL BIRD that. Wow. So when we are thinking about AI in our networks, presumably, like low latency is crucial Yes. With, you know, AI workloads. RAMI RAHIM Yes MICHAEL BIRD Yeah. And so, so how, how are we addressing that? RAMI RAHIM So it goes back to your question about AI workloads and how AI sort of affects the requirements of networks. I mean, low latency is one attribute. High performance. No congestion. Congestion is absolutely evil for networks, uh, in the AI context because at the end of the day, congestion results in using your very expensive GPUs less efficiently. Nobody wants to waste GPU cycles today. And the way to not waste GPU cycles is to have high performance, low latency and congestion free data center networks, which happens to be exactly what we know how to do really, really well. Yeah. MICHAEL BIRD because your GPUs that maybe, maybe tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes. They're a, like a prime asset in your organization. Absolutely. Like you wanna be using them flat out. Absolutely. So you don't want, you don't want any congestion. RAMI RAHIM Nobody wants to spend, you know, millions of dollars in GPUs and then sting out on a bad network that's gonna use those GPUs at like 50% utilization. That's what we are doing. We're build building the networks of the future that can keep up with all of the attributes of. AI networks, low latency, high performance, congestion free. We've innovated not just in the hardware, but in the protocols, the software that can achieve all of these attributes. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah. One of the things that I found really fascinating was the fact that the interconnect is ethernet. RAMI RAHIM Yes MICHAEL BIRD Yes. Which I, I thought was quite fascinating. 'cause ethernet sort of feels like this little old standard from, you know, 10 mega networks, but ethernet still. Oh, ethernet still alive and kicking. RAMI RAHIM I mean, you know, ethernet has evolved over the years, but the thing about ethernet is that it is an open industry standard and that's typically actually always what wins out. Nobody wants closed in this industry. People want an ecosystem of players that can innovate in each layer of the network, each layer of the IT stack, which is why, you know, I would never bet against the ethernet and you know, one of the things that we announced at this show. Is the first ethernet scale up switch for the a MD Helios Rack, which is a big deal in this industry. MICHAEL BIRD Alright, let's talk security. Um, this feels like a really obvious question, but how important is security for networks? RAMI RAHIM Very important. MICHAEL BIRD Good. Okay. RAMI RAHIM The one thing that every malware attack has in common is that it requires the network to do its dirty work. And so the good guys have to leverage the network to be a sensor of where security threats are and to also be the policy enforcer of how to stop these threats. And especially if, you know, if, if a threat happens to make some sort of penetration to prevent the lateral spread of that threat. You cannot do this without a network that's inherently secure. Um, at its core, which is why we say, you know, security can't be an afterthought. It can't be a bolt on. It has to be a built into the network for it to be effective. MICHAEL BIRD Okay, and so what is HPE networking doing to address those threats? RAMI RAHIM We've got all of the ingredients that are necessary to achieve the future of security, and the future of security is really around zero. Trust, network access, everybody. All of our customers are moving in some way, shape or form towards that future universal zero trust network access. And we've got all the ingredients, A world class N solution industry leadership in firewalls. In fact, the fastest firewall in the world, the SRX 4,700, uh, 1.4 terabits per second. I mean, it's smokes anything else that's in the industry right now. Cloud security. not to mention sd-wan, which is typically part of your security architecture we've got all the ingredients to build an amazing solution for Universal Zero Trust network access, and that's exactly what we're doing. MICHAEL BIRD Where do you see the world of networking going in the future? RAMI RAHIM I really do believe it is towards the vision of self-driving. A lot of progress has been made, as I mentioned, I think we're sort of in the realm right now of assisted self-driving. Where networks have the ability to understand the satisfaction of users and to make adjustments. But typically with some level of human involvement, the next step is to remove humans from the equation almost entirely, and to let humans focus on much more strategic forward looking activities as opposed to just keeping the lights on. I think that's the future. MICHAEL BIRD So currently there's a human in the loop, but the hope is that actually you won't need to have a human in the loop. RAMI RAHIM In fact, it's not even the hope I, it's just a matter of time. It's, it would, it's sort of like what's happening with autonomous vehicles today, right? Who would've thought five years ago that you'd have cars roaming the streets of San Francisco and other cities around the world without drivers? This is happening today. There will be driverless networks. MICHAEL BIRD What do you find most interesting about networking? RAMI RAHIM That's a good one. the thing that have always fascinated me about networks is that they have this incredible ability to overcome the limitations of any one person or thing. I mean, think about it. Single GPU great for gaming, but you connect a hundred thousand GPUs with a low latency high performance network. And now you're accelerating the pace of finding cures for deadly diseases. So that's what a network is to me. It allows you to overcome the limitations of a one thing or one person. That's the mission that we're on. To me, I find this very motivational. MICHAEL BIRD Rami, thank you so much for your time. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on Technology Now. RAMI RAHIM It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. SAM JARRELL Wow. I find it really interesting that you talked a lot about self-driving networks. MICHAEL BIRD I had not really heard of that concept before. It’s that sort of concerpt of , you know, today networks maybe have some AI augmentation as part of it,. You know it’s like, oh, you know, this switch is going down of there’s an issue here in the your network, would you like me to fix it for you as a human in the loop. Like, you sort of have to say, “yes, I want you to do that” or “I’m going to make this configuration chant”. You know, “do you think I should do it?” and you go, yes. But yeah, what he talked about was like, you wouldn’t have any of that. the network would just run itself. Just it would make configuration changes. It would make decisions, and it would do it better than maybe, you know, because there's so much access to so much data better than any human can, which I thought was quite a fascinating sort of place that we'll eventually get to the confidence that you had of like, absolutely, we going to get there? I thought it was just amazing. So good. SAM JARRELL So good. It sounds like it will be able to sort of address its own problems. So self-driving and self-healing. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, absolutely. Which I think I know networks is one of those things that I just, you know, that can be so, so, so complicated. In so many of our organizations, sometimes it's just hard to wrap your head around how everything is working. So to have this sort of AI that understands everything, self-healing, self-driving, all that sort of stuff, I think is, yeah, I think it's really cool. So I really I sort of felt like the crescendo of that interview, it felt like the, the thing that we were sort of leading up to all of these different developments that, that he talks about. So, it's pretty cool. SAM JARRELL I agree, I agree, I mean, it's a testament to what he's talked quite a bit about this week. You know, the speed of progress. Yeah. And we're on the precipice of things just continuing to compound. And yeah, there'll be newer and newer advancements in AI and therefore in our network technology. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, I mean we talked about it last week but liquid cool switches. Com on… that’s cool isn’t it? SAM JARRELL Yeah MICHAEL BIRD So Sam, I have a question for you… what’s the geekiest bit of technology you own? SAM JARRELL Oh, gosh. Well, it probably depends on what direction you want to go with it, but I do own a liquid cooled gaming PC. It's nice. What about you, though? MICHAEL BIRD What do you own? Well, I love home automation. Always. My wife thinks about it. Basically breaking my home and making sure lights don't work at various points. But, yeah, I love all that sort of stuff. The Geekiest home automation thing I have is I have a sensor on my freezer, so if I leave the door open for a set amount of time, it put some lights on in the lounge because I basically kept leaving the freezer open. And I'm a new parent, like I was. I was just like, too tired to shut it. So, now the reason why I was asking you is because Rami is a self-declared geek and he has gone also has gone all the way when it comes to automation at home!  RAMI RAHIM I have everything automated. Automated thermostats, automated door locks, automated water sprinklers. You know, it, it exists. I pretty much own it. MICHAEL BIRD  You are speaking my language. So much so that my, my home automation broke when I was out and my. All my lights are currently stuck on my house. RAMI RAHIM  I can help you with that. MICHAEL BIRD  Okay. SAM JARRELL Okay that brings us to the end of Technology Now for this week. Thank you to our guest, Rami Rahim, And of course, to our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us. MICHAEL BIRD If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do let us know – rate and review us wherever you listen to episodes and if you want to get in contact with us, send us an email to technology now AT hpe.com and don’t forget to subscribe so you can listen first every week. Technology Now is hosted by Sam Jarrell and myself, Michael Bird This episode was produced by Harry Lampert and Izzie Clarke with production support from Alysha Kempson-Taylor, Beckie Bird, Alissa Mitry and Renee Edwards. Our video editor was Leon Radschinski-Gorman and our music was, as always, composed by Greg Hooper. SAM JARRELL Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy-Anne Goldman and Jacqueline Green and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, and Ambar Maldonado. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is a Fresh Air Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (and) we’ll see you next week. Cheers!