Good business as in earning money or as producing customer satisfaction? I don't know about the former, but I do know that HP printers are a horrible user experience these days. The printer is connected via USB, but it cannot be used without an internet connection to their data collection and ink selling cloud nonsense. I will never by anything from that brand again. (I used to be a HP fan since the 1980s.)
I would very much like someone in charge at either HPE or Juniper to explain to me in plain English what that means exactly, in practical terms. I doubt it means anything.
It's sad, HPE will suck out all the life-force of Juniper; I have had other HP-acquired products and they never got better in subsequent offerings, only worse.
We have been testing equipment from other vendors, so that we could replace Juniper in the future, it needed. Those plans just became much more relevant, unless the plan is that Juniper takes the lead on HPE networking.
HPE would have been purchased by Micro Focus is it wasn't a hardware company. It's really sad to see the decline, HP actually made some nice stuff, 15 - 20 years ago.
Why only 90%? For smart phone operating systems it's higher I'd assume (not counting China, that's not a free country anyway). Same for desktop computers.
A major failure of free market economics that is widely ignored by politics.
I was under the impression Juniper market share had been falling consistently. But it sounds like there is a market where they are still doing well, what is it? Enterprise something?
I work in a primarily Juniper environment, and I'm not that familiar with HPE (Did they previously have anything in the networking space?). It's sounding pretty doom-and-gloom in here, what should my level of concern be?
I would be pretty bummed to change vendor. Junos is probably my favorite networking OS. The CLI is comfortable, BSD is never too far away, and the config structure is gorgeous. IOS (and similar) can really be a pain to read by comparison.
HP had their own ProCurve networking and they also bought Aruba.
We don't know what HPE is going to do to Juniper specifically, but in general many acquisitions either raise prices or simplify the product line by canceling some products. In this case HPE may cancel some Aruba products and replace them with Mist equivalents.
I work at a network VAR partnered with both of these companies, but these thoughts are my own assumptions. HPE didn't immediately implode Aruba, I don't think they'll immediately implode Juniper either. That said, I don't think it's a good move as a fan of Juniper myself. I think Mist/AI led the desire for the acquisition, particularly with their performance in the lower end market last year vs HPE Aruba type products which usually win for higher end enterprise. I'm cautious about how they'll handle the other product lines, particularly on how much the care about them. Obviously nothing is disappearing overnight though, this will be something that shakes out over years.
Juniper has no cohesion in their product offering, so fits well with HPE who also fail in this regard. They had all the pieces, ex/qfx/srx/128t/mist/aapstra/mx/ptx to build any network you needed, but no ability to fully integrate all of the things. Surprising that HPE acquires them considering they already competitors across half of those things procurve/silverpeak/aruba/plexxi.
I was always a fan of HP and 3com for networking over Cisco. It was easy to keep gear assigned to specific tasks. This is our core switch. This is the core router. Pricing kept this amenable to management. Juniper was never "in the budget" as a viable alternative. I'm currently at a Cisco shop that purchased their first Juniper switch 12 months ago for Equinix cross-connects to the cloud. Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
I remember working with Juniper equipment a decade ago (I didn't like it because I've traditionally worked exclusively with Cisco equipment), but I haven't heard anyone in my circles mention Juniper since. Are they considered a niche vendor today (similar to Novell in the 2000s)?
Having worked with every vendor under the sun for networking equipment across my career, I enjoy working with Juniper by far the most.
The configuration syntax works as expected, it's flexible but extensible in the right places and mostly has lots of knobs to tune things but without requiring extensive boilerplate to get things to work as expected.
The hardware seems to fit intelligent niches and actually does what it says on the spec sheets.
The system is FreeBSD, while that's a debatable choice in 2024 it's far better than the obscure OSes that others are using for their core systems.
At the end of the day you can always just "start shell user root" and be root on a FreeBSD system. If you're a bit crafty on most Juniper systems you can also run unsigned code if you like. Some Juniper platforms (and not talking about just the huge ones, some of the 1U pizzabox switches) allow you to run a full-blown Linux system alongside the FreeBSD image (because they are actually Linux running FreeBSD on a hypervisor).
JTAC was filled with skilled, intelligent engineers who actually cared and tried to solve your problems. (Not sure today as I haven't had to call them in years). The other TACs I've delt with were focused on call time and ticket handling metrics and would ask obviously pointless questions or repeat information you already provided for a fast close.
I still remember calling JTAC during one outage we had. First L1 engineer after my initial description of the problem basically came back and said something like "that sounds like a really bad outage, please open SSH from 1.2.3.4 and add this public key and I'll login and get the information for L3." Within about 15 minutes I was on the phone with an L3 engineer who correctly diagnosed and proposed a fix for the issue. Amazing support. Not perfect, I have some horror stories too, but, always with people who cared and far less than with C or other vendors TACs.
Companies go with Juniper because they can outfit a data center at half the price of Cisco. NYSE did that a decade or more ago with their Mahwah data center.
Its not really a bad strategy. If you're going to have a large team of network engineers work continuously on a the Juniper tech stack, they'll get use to it - even if they were raised on Cisco IOS. Juniper stuff works just as well as the rest of them.
Juniper is pretty big, and probably the company most of the Cisco users are turning to, in my experience. Cisco has stagnated for so long and continue their attempt to push over prices solutions that simply isn't as good or modern as those of their competitors.
We continued to buy Cisco for longer than we should have, because "New stuff is surely around the corner", but it's not. Cisco still makes enterprise equipment that can't do IPv6. So we switched to Juniper three or four years ago, and may of our customers are doing or considering the same.
Cisco isn't the dominate play it used to be and is almost never the first choice for new projects anymore.
I remember Juniper making news way back when by using FreeBSD as the OS for the router and that was supposed to have saved them a bunch of development resources and earned a bunch of nerd cred.
This has the potential to be good. HPE has mostly let the (superior) Aruba line grow as they were, and TBH the CX stuff is quite good. They don't have any enterprise class routing/firewalls. Their AP hardware is great but Central can be frustrating. If they can put the pieces together without fucking things up, there's a good product line up here at a time when people are sick and tired of Cisco's licensing antics. TBD...
HPE took over Aruba wireless and Nimble storage. We used both products. They didn't fuck with Nimble support much. As of a few years ago, it was still great.
Aruba wireless...oh man. The support was so terrible.
We had some high availability controllers go out of sync. Couple hours on the phone, no resolution. Had a bunch of back and forth, another couple calls, nothing. It was sort of funny (and sad) watching a different 'tech' try the same scripted steps, over and over again.
Finally I was able to get the issue escalated, and the next guy I talked to seemed to really know his shit. Made some fundamental changes that should have never been that way in the first place, he got one controller back on, and then in the middle the next controller, he fucking bailed off the call and left us in the hands of a new guy.
A new guy who couldn't fix it. He actually broke it in a new away, and then our maintenance window closed. Two more maintenance windows later, nothing fixed, same useless drones trying the same crap, I just gave up.
I ended up fixing the last bad controller myself. My organization was paying almost my salary per year for this 'support' contract. What a joke.
AlbertCory|2 years ago
Agilent took the heart & soul of HP. Then it split further (Keysight et al)
HP took the printers, which at least used to be a good business.
HPE is the wretched refuse that's left.
usr1106|2 years ago
Good business as in earning money or as producing customer satisfaction? I don't know about the former, but I do know that HP printers are a horrible user experience these days. The printer is connected via USB, but it cannot be used without an internet connection to their data collection and ink selling cloud nonsense. I will never by anything from that brand again. (I used to be a HP fan since the 1980s.)
__d|2 years ago
bayindirh|2 years ago
Cray tends to disagree...
zdw|2 years ago
jgalt212|2 years ago
I think I just threw up in my mouth.
AdamJacobMuller|2 years ago
geodel|2 years ago
intothemild|2 years ago
This is where I vomited.
Tommah|2 years ago
mrweasel|2 years ago
shrubble|2 years ago
AdamJacobMuller|2 years ago
mrweasel|2 years ago
HPE would have been purchased by Micro Focus is it wasn't a hardware company. It's really sad to see the decline, HP actually made some nice stuff, 15 - 20 years ago.
candiddevmike|2 years ago
tiberious726|2 years ago
user3939382|2 years ago
usr1106|2 years ago
A major failure of free market economics that is widely ignored by politics.
nsteel|2 years ago
I was under the impression Juniper market share had been falling consistently. But it sounds like there is a market where they are still doing well, what is it? Enterprise something?
_cormorant|2 years ago
I would be pretty bummed to change vendor. Junos is probably my favorite networking OS. The CLI is comfortable, BSD is never too far away, and the config structure is gorgeous. IOS (and similar) can really be a pain to read by comparison.
wmf|2 years ago
We don't know what HPE is going to do to Juniper specifically, but in general many acquisitions either raise prices or simplify the product line by canceling some products. In this case HPE may cancel some Aruba products and replace them with Mist equivalents.
zamadatix|2 years ago
tlivolsi|2 years ago
meerinor|2 years ago
pavelstoev|2 years ago
AdamJacobMuller|2 years ago
signa11|2 years ago
csco beckons thee
redrix|2 years ago
Good lord. I don’t know whether I respect or pity you.
There used to be a saying at Juniper: If there was an issue with MX, it was likely a config issue. If there was an issue with SRX it was likely a bug.
Was incredibly accurate more often than not.
I miss Netscreen.
oldnetguy|2 years ago
rasz|2 years ago
The Company that Broke Canada - BobbyBroccoli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6xwMIUPHss
m01|2 years ago
wcchandler|2 years ago
runjake|2 years ago
The HP you’re thinking of is now Agilent.
And this isn’t going to go well. Look at the downward slope of Aruba since HPE acquired them.
mooreds|2 years ago
"The combination is expected to achieve operating efficiencies and run-rate annual cost synergies of $450 million within 36 months post close."
Not that such layoffs are unexpected.
0: https://newsroom.juniper.net/news/news-details/2024/HPE-to-A...
yalogin|2 years ago
jasoneckert|2 years ago
AdamJacobMuller|2 years ago
The configuration syntax works as expected, it's flexible but extensible in the right places and mostly has lots of knobs to tune things but without requiring extensive boilerplate to get things to work as expected.
The hardware seems to fit intelligent niches and actually does what it says on the spec sheets.
The system is FreeBSD, while that's a debatable choice in 2024 it's far better than the obscure OSes that others are using for their core systems.
At the end of the day you can always just "start shell user root" and be root on a FreeBSD system. If you're a bit crafty on most Juniper systems you can also run unsigned code if you like. Some Juniper platforms (and not talking about just the huge ones, some of the 1U pizzabox switches) allow you to run a full-blown Linux system alongside the FreeBSD image (because they are actually Linux running FreeBSD on a hypervisor).
JTAC was filled with skilled, intelligent engineers who actually cared and tried to solve your problems. (Not sure today as I haven't had to call them in years). The other TACs I've delt with were focused on call time and ticket handling metrics and would ask obviously pointless questions or repeat information you already provided for a fast close.
I still remember calling JTAC during one outage we had. First L1 engineer after my initial description of the problem basically came back and said something like "that sounds like a really bad outage, please open SSH from 1.2.3.4 and add this public key and I'll login and get the information for L3." Within about 15 minutes I was on the phone with an L3 engineer who correctly diagnosed and proposed a fix for the issue. Amazing support. Not perfect, I have some horror stories too, but, always with people who cared and far less than with C or other vendors TACs.
Very sad day.
SkipperCat|2 years ago
Its not really a bad strategy. If you're going to have a large team of network engineers work continuously on a the Juniper tech stack, they'll get use to it - even if they were raised on Cisco IOS. Juniper stuff works just as well as the rest of them.
mrweasel|2 years ago
We continued to buy Cisco for longer than we should have, because "New stuff is surely around the corner", but it's not. Cisco still makes enterprise equipment that can't do IPv6. So we switched to Juniper three or four years ago, and may of our customers are doing or considering the same.
Cisco isn't the dominate play it used to be and is almost never the first choice for new projects anymore.
superbaconman|2 years ago
nightfly|2 years ago
foobarian|2 years ago
green-salt|2 years ago
nodesocket|2 years ago
polski-g|2 years ago
sciencesama|2 years ago
whalesalad|2 years ago
rdist|2 years ago
mc32|2 years ago
FL410|2 years ago
bluedino|2 years ago
Aruba wireless...oh man. The support was so terrible.
We had some high availability controllers go out of sync. Couple hours on the phone, no resolution. Had a bunch of back and forth, another couple calls, nothing. It was sort of funny (and sad) watching a different 'tech' try the same scripted steps, over and over again.
Finally I was able to get the issue escalated, and the next guy I talked to seemed to really know his shit. Made some fundamental changes that should have never been that way in the first place, he got one controller back on, and then in the middle the next controller, he fucking bailed off the call and left us in the hands of a new guy.
A new guy who couldn't fix it. He actually broke it in a new away, and then our maintenance window closed. Two more maintenance windows later, nothing fixed, same useless drones trying the same crap, I just gave up.
I ended up fixing the last bad controller myself. My organization was paying almost my salary per year for this 'support' contract. What a joke.