Hewlett Packard Enterprises networking business is getting a serious shot in the arm with the unveiling of the companys plan on Monday to acquire software-defined WAN standout Silver Peak for approximately $925 million in cash.

HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world, said HPE president and CEO Antonio Neri, in a statement. 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 Peaks 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.

HPE will combine Silver Peaks SD-WAN technology with Aruba, HPEs networking subsidiary, who was recently named a visionary in Gartners Magic Quadrant For Data Center And Cloud Networking.

[Related: Antonio Neri Is Doing Well, Has Not Had COVID-19 Symptoms For 10 Days]

Silver Peak, who received a five-star rating in CRNs 2020 Partner Program Guide, has been a longtime player in the SD-WAN space who has more than 1,500 SD-WAN customers in production worldwide. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based companys SD-WAN will boost Arubas Edge Service Platform by tying together Silver Peak SD-WAN with Arubas SD-Branch solutions in a move to help customers simplify branch office and WAN deployments to empower remote workers and enable cloud-connected distributed enterprises.

Todays announcement comes at a unique moment for our customers, who are grappling with business recovery in the wake of the pandemic, said Keerti Melkote, president of Intelligent Edge for Hewlett Packard Enterprise and founder of Aruba Networks. 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 Peaks technology transforms legacy WAN architectures to self-driving WANs, which is a perfect fit with Arubas cloud-native, AI-driven Edge Services Platform. Together, we will be able to meet these needs with critical connectivity, security, and AI capabilities to drive the next generation of Edge-to-Cloud transformation.

In a recent interview with CRN, Arubas Melkote said the network edge and the data found at the edge is where the most powerful opportunities lie for businesses and channel partners. Data isnt confined to the data rooms like it was during the mainframe era or on our computers, and the new normal is going to be even more pervasive than that. [Data] is getting into all the places we live, work and play. We call this the edge, he told CRN. Its an exciting place.

The SD-WAN market is expected to grow from $2.3 billion in 2020 to nearly $5 billion in 2024, representing an compound annual growth rate of 20 percent, according to 650 Group.

Silver Peak helps enterprises and service providers migrate to secure enterprise-grade SD-WAN connectivity, while dramatically improving application performance and lowering connectivity costs, according to Silver Peak. Powered by Silver Peaks SD-WAN edge platform, customers can achieve dedicated WAN-like performance while running all cloud applications and services via broadband access.

Founded in 2004, Silver Peak said it enables freedom of choice to leverage best-in-class technologies from a broad range of ecosystem partners, particularly those focused on security.

David Hughes, founder and CEO of Silver Peak said bringing together Silver Peaks advanced SD-WAN solutions with Arubas networking portfolio provides an unprecedented opportunity to deliver business-driven solutions to customers.

The Silver Peak and Aruba teams share a common vision and goal to provide simplicity, scalability, and application-awareness at the edge, said Hughes in a statement. With Arubas extensive go-to-market, we will further accelerate our ability to drive faster adoption of these transformational technologies.

HPE expects to close on the Silver Peak deal in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2020.

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HPE To Acquire Silver Peak For $925M To Boost SD-WAN, Aruba - CRN: Technology news for channel partners and solution providers