Latest / Technology Now / What's going on at Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2026?
Transcript
- MICHAEL BIRD Good morning, Sam. SAM JARRELL Good afternoon, Michael. Umm, do you mind stepping to the side a minute so i can see where you are... this is a video episode after all! Yeah that looks familiar! You’re back in Barcelona aren't you! MICHAEL BIRD I am and in fact, I’m back in the same hall where you and I were for Discover Barcelona back in December but this time, I’m here for Mobile World Congress. SAM JARRELL Ooh, sounds fascinating![BM1.1] I want to know more, so let’s get on with the episode. MICHAEL BIRD Absolutely. I’m Michael Bird SAM JARRELL I'm Sam Jarrell MICHAEL BIRD And welcome to Technology Now from HPE. MICHAEL BIRD Well Sam welcome to the show floor at Mobile World Congress barcelona 2026 which is the 20th Mobile word congress here in Barcelona. And as you mentioned this is actually a video episode. So our listeners or viewers can see everything for themselves. SAM JARRELL Yes, and we'll make sure to put a link to the video episode in the show notes for you. Michael, that show floor looks really busy from what I think I can see. So what exactly are we as HPE doing there MICHAEL BIRD Well, there have been talks and presentations going all day here in the the HPE booth, HPE stand, the spaceborne computers just behind me. We did an episode on that a few months ago, and there really is something here for everyone. You can probably just see, like, yeah, stands and other bits and bobs around me. And of course, it's not just HPE that's here. There are what feels like thousands of other different organisations here talking about all the cool things they're up to. So I think it's one of the biggest events I've been to. It's just massive. SAM JARRELL It is one of the biggest events I think that happens. I think there's what, like 100,000 or more people that come to this? MICHAEL BIRD I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. And of course, Sam, this is a big event all about networking. So I obviously wanted to catch up with Rami Rahim, Executive Vice President, president and General Manager, HP networking. Because it has been a few months since we last spoke and this industry moves fast, doesn't it? So Rami and I had a chat earlier and he explained why an event like Mobile World Congress is central to the future of networking at HP. So, Rami, we're here at Mobile World Congress 2026. What exactly is HP doing at an event like this? MICHAEL BIRD So Rami, we're here at Mobile World Congress 2026. Um, what exactly is HPE doing at an event like this? RAMI RAHIM Well, we're here talking about our technology, talking about our solutions with our valued customers. Mostly Telco customers, but not exclusively Telco customers. I have meetings wall to wall with many customers across every industry, every segment from service providers, cloud providers, and enterprises. And I'm standing in front of our lovely booth where we are demonstrating some of these great technologies that we are, you know, in the market with. MICHAEL BIRD And how many MWC have you been to? What number is this? RAMI RAHIM honestly cannot answer that question because it is too many to count. MICHAEL BIRD So, um, what exactly are your expectations for this event? RAMI RAHIM My expectations are having valued conversations with our customers, getting great feedback from them about. The direction of travel for HPE and especially HPE networking. Obviously a lot has happened over the last year. Last time I was at this event, we were two separate companies, Juniper and HPE. Today we are one powerhouse IT technology provider with every element of the technology stack. So that gives us a lot to talk about with our customers. MICHAEL BIRD gosh, when you put it like that 12 months ago, still Juniper and HPE, that is, I mean, that's a pH a phenomenal amount of change in 12 months. RAMI RAHIM is hard to believe that it was only a few short months ago that we closed this transaction. Uh, if you consider all of the progress that has been made, it's actually pretty amazing. MICHAEL BIRD And what are you personally, um, hoping to get out of m WC this year? RAMI RAHIM There's so much to talk about, you know? When we closed this transaction shortly afterwards, as you know, we were in Barcelona at Discover and we talked about a number of new solutions. We talked about the cross-pollination of our two industry leading AIOps platforms, Aruba Central and Mist. We talked about having common access point. We introduced into, uh, the market, the MX 3 0 1, which is ideal for routing, for inference at the edge. Uh, we talked about the industry's first. A hundred percent liquid cooled, a hundred terabyte plus data center switch the QFX 52 50. Um, many of these innovations are now not just announcements. They're in the market and the rest are going to be in the market soon. Very shortly from now, just before this event, we announced two industry leading platforms, the PTX 12,000 and the PTX 10,002. These are game changers in that they are the next inflection point in 800 gig density. That's ideal for customers that are looking to develop data centers for AI and to connect those data centers together. MICHAEL BIRD that from the, from the wider event. Um, clearly this event is quite different this year for you than it was last year, but what are the sort of the big, wider themes? I mean, walking around. I see a lot of ai. So is that, is that still, is that still momentum still there? It's still big. It's still exciting. RAMI RAHIM Not only is it still here, I personally believe we are still in the very early stages of ai. Despite all of the noise, all of the attention, all of the investment, we ain't seen nothing yet, which is why it's so important that we stay ahead From a technology standpoint and a services standpoint, our solutions in AI for networks and in networks for AI are honestly second to none. In AI for networks, no other technology provider has made the progress that we have made in automating networks, in transforming networks, so that they're not just up, they're actually delivering an exceptional experience to our customers. And we've got two amazing platforms, mist and Aruba Central that is giving our customers that experience each and every day. And in networks for ai, the amazing thing here is that we're no longer just helping our customers. Build AI data center networks. We are helping them build AI data centers, period, full stop. Because we have the entire technology stack that increases our relevance, it increases our opportunity. It's really an exciting time in this industry. It's a very exciting to buy time to be in HPE MICHAEL BIRD And when you, I mean, when you think about ai, you, I mean, a lot of people just think, you know, GPUs. GPUs, but actually the networking element is. Sort of, it's, I wouldn't say hidden, but it's, it's not off, not necessarily always talked about in the same breath as GPUs, but it's like very, very, very important to it. RAMI RAHIM You know, anybody that's building or operating a AI data center today understands that the networking piece of that data center is a relatively small component. From an overall investment standpoint, maybe around 10, 15% of the total cost of the data center is gonna be networking, however. The decision that one makes in the network infrastructure is gonna be the decision that will determine how efficiently and how much value you're gonna get. Out of the remaining 85% of the investment in the GPUs and the compute, you make the wrong decision and that precious GPU resources now being used at 50% utilization, nobody wants that. That's why the network is so crucial. It's in fact never been more important than it is today. MICHAEL BIRD It sort of feels like, it's like you, you build a stadium, you know, a massive football stadium, but you don't put any public transport or any roads, so no one can get to it. So it's, it's completely empty. RAMI RAHIM Absolutely. Or it's even more profound. It's like you don't even have any teams playing in the, in the stadium. RAMI RAHIM In order to determine if a network is performing, you need to collect real time information, not about the network elements, but about the end users and the real time satisfaction of those end users. Our industry track record of innovation in this area is second to none. And the other area is the networks for ai. It's in building the data center infrastructure that's inside the data center and between data centers that can keep up with the capacity, the power efficiency that all AI data center builders require today. Both of these themes are in full swing and I don't think that our portfolio to satisfy. Both of these things has ever been stronger than it is today. RAMI RAHIM Are any of them impactful for us? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it just so happens that there is this perfect opportunity and the Venn diagram between the need of our customers. And the capabilities of our solutions across the entire tech stack is like a hundred percent overlapping right now. So we are in a great position. MICHAEL BIRD so can we talk announcements? 'cause MWC feels like, uh, we, we'll be doing lots of announcements at this event. Can you, can you talk me through some of the big announcements that are happening for HPA? RAMI RAHIM Yes. I mean, we've made a number of big announcements just before the show. We've, uh, announced the two new. Industry leading routing products in the PTX product family, the PTX 10,002, and the PTX 12,000. Both of these products have industry leading 800 gigabit ethernet density and power efficiency that make them absolutely ideal for data center interconnect and core connectivity. The silicon in these products is now on its sixth generation, and we have. Fine tuned and perfected it to be able to achieve what we can achieve today with these products from a performance and a power efficiency standpoint. So I could not be more proud of these products and the timing couldn't be more perfect because any data center builder or operated today needs products like these. Um, but we didn't stop there. There are a number of other areas. One example would be the combination of. Our virtual routing stack, we call it JCNR and our ProLiant servers. So now we are coming to market with solutions that take the best of all of our products and, uh, capabilities across business units, something that our customers have been asking quite a bit about. And increasingly, each and every day we're providing more proof points of the power of this combination MICHAEL BIRD which is really nicely onto my my next question 'cause um, we chatted in, um, Barcelona at HPE Discover Barcelona back in December, and we were talking about the, the progress, uh, since the Juniper acquisition. I think you said it'd been going really well and It's been about three months now since we, we met in Barcelona. So like, what's happened since then? Like how's progress been since then? RAMI RAHIM Well, progress has been amazing and I think it really starts with the cultural similarities between the two teams. Which has allowed us to just hit the floor running. So we have an organizational structure in place. We have leadership, we have a clear strategy. We are executing with speed. We are absolutely not losing sight of what is really important as we combine these two companies, which is innovation. Innovation for our customers, for our partners. You know, anybody that was skeptical about our ability to integrate but also to innovate is no longer skeptical. Uh, and I really, really could not be more proud of the teams both from the Juniper and the HPE side that have come together to achieve this kind of progress in this little time is truly awe-inspiring and it makes me very proud. MICHAEL BIRD And so looking six months ahead or 12 months ahead, like what's, what's next? RAMI RAHIM I said earlier, we're in the early innings. Our strategy, our vision, is all around the self-driving network. This means the network that requires no human intervention whatsoever to do what it needs to do. Not just to connect, but to connect with an exceptional experience. But we've made so much progress. Maybe we're 75% of the way there. And just like now when you go to San Francisco and you see cars without drivers all over the city, that is the future of networking. And I think we're a few short years away from that becoming a reality. MICHAEL BIRD And that's these sort of self-driving networks as opposed to self-driving cars? RAMI RAHIM Yeah. And I act absolutely believe it's necessary because the demands on networking in the era of ai. Have never been greater, and it's honestly impossible for humans to keep up with the pace of change. So the timing is perfect, and our ability to get there is absolutely there. I mean, I, I just, just can't wait. MICHAEL BIRD so what should we expect to see from HP networking this year? Any exciting product announcements, you can, you can, you can say, now, is it all close guard or secret? RAMI RAHIM Well, I'm not gonna pre-announce anything with you. As much as I love you and I love this podcast series, you're not gonna get me to pre-announce something, however, that being said. I just made like two groundbreaking, not two, a bunch of groundbreaking announcements just a few days ago. Uh, these are like sort of big deals. These are industry shattering announcements from a standpoint of scale of connectivity, delivery of an exceptional experience, the combination of our solutions and technologies across compute and networking. And we're just getting started. So watch this space. I promise you'll be the first or maybe among the first to know. SAM JARRELL Wow. So it looks like Rami won't break embargo for anybody. Not even the Technology Now podcast. MICHAEL BIRD No, not not not even the Technology Now podcast. I sort of didn't mean to ask him that question, but no, he was he was very true to his word. He said very nice things about the show, but yeah, he, he he's not going to give us any product announcements. But it was a fantastic interview I really enjoyed. I always enjoy spending time with Remy. He's he's a really fascinating person, and he has lots of really interesting things to say. And, you know, I just think the passion, his passion, just he just exudes passion, doesn't he? SAM JARRELL I would imagine especially an event like Mobile World Congress. This is his bread and butter. Right. And it does seem like the, the sort of usual suspects pop up in these kinds of conversations. I heard you guys discuss a little bit about self-driving networks, which is our big thing, and then also networks for AI and AI for networks. So I'm curious what maybe you're hearing as you're there at the event. Are these same themes popping up with people? MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think those those those are the big conversations I think. Yeah. Self self-driving networks. I mean, Rami was so excited about it. Self-driving networks, like, you know, I think from the conversation I had with him is like, this is where we're going to get to like, this is this is like the obvious place we're going to get to. And that and just like the advances in the, in the technology from a networking perspective to, to enable networking for AI. SAM JARRELL Wonderful. Yeah. And you know, he also touched on, of course, our integration with juniper networking. It's crazy to imagine just a year ago that we were still two separate companies, because it does feel like we've kind of we've come together pretty well, actually. But it's I imagine it was quite an undertaking for him as well as the folks that have made their way into our company. But now it's it's very nice to suddenly get to debut all of our, our sort of one HPE announcements and products at Mobile World Congress. So that's very exciting. MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, it's slightly blew my mind when he said, 12 months ago we were two companies and I thought, oh my goodness, so much has happened in 12 months. SAM JARRELL How many times have you been to Mobile World Congress? MICHAEL BIRD I have been once. This is my first time here. It's very exciting. It's very exciting. SAM JARRELL What are some first impressions? MICHAEL BIRD The sheer scale, like it is absolutely ginormous. It took us 20 minutes to walk here from the the front door. So we got our badge and scanned in, and then we just went through what felt like hall after hall after stand after stand. There's robots. There are cars. There's just so much technology, so much cool stuff. So Yeah, it's really fun. I'm hoping hoping I'll have some time to have a little wander around. So anyway, Sam, as the world gets more connected, I just wanted to hear his thoughts on the the sort of the bigger picture. So, Rami, final question. As the world becomes more and more data driven, is networking more important now than it's been at any point in history? MICHAEL BIRD Now, as the world gets more connected, I wanted to hear Rami’s thoughts on the bigger picture. Is networking more important now than it has ever been at any point in history? Let’s give him the final word... MICHAEL BIRD Okay. So Rammy, final question. As the, as the world, as the world becomes more and more, uh, data driven is networking. More important now than it's been at any point in history RAMI RAHIM So I had this amazing opportunity to have a front row seat as the internet was scaling to what it is today. So I saw. Just how important networking was back then, and I can absolutely say that today it's even more important, right? I, I mean, we were just talking about GPUs earlier. One GPU great for a gaming experience. A hundred thousand or a million GPUs connected together through a high performance, low latency, high experience network. And now you are transforming industries, you're finding cures to deadly diseases. You are, you're solving problems that would otherwise be completely not possible. That's the power of connectivity. That's our business. That's why it's so important. It's never been more important. 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 Subject line? SAM JARRELL Mobile World Congress MICHAEL BIRD Mobile World Congress. 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, Zoe Revis, Katie Champagne, Alissa Mitry, and Janessa Ayache [[eye-osh]]. Our video editor was Leon Radshinski-Gorman and our theme music was 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! SAM JARRELL Bye y’all