Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. announced today the launch of HPE Aruba Networking Enterprise Private 5G, an offering designed to assist customers in expediting and streamlining the deployment and management of private 5G networks.

The company said the offering will deliver reliable wireless coverage across enterprises, resulting in previously unimagined applications. I had the opportunity to receive a pre-briefing with several HPE executives, including Stuart Strickland, HPE Fellow and wireless chief technology officer, and producdt marketing lead Gayle Levin.

Strickland told me that, although there was interest across several use cases that would be well-served by private cellular, he saw many companies need help. So HPE decided to rethink things.

“This effort is really around making a private cellular network as similar to Wi-Fi and fixed networks as possible,” he told me. “So that’s where we’re heading — private cellular that shows up like a Wi-Fi access point.” With its expanded secure edge-to-cloud offering, Aruba Networking is the only network vendor that offers unified Wi-Fi and private 5G solutions.

Aruba plans to serve sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, public venues, and education in addressing complex connectivity challenges across extensive and remote locations.

Common and emerging use cases

Strickland said that HPE sees several common uses, including autonomous inspection of vehicles, fleet management and logistics optimization, and digital energy and employee safety. Some emerging use cases include mission-critical communications (commonly in healthcare settings, back-of-house operations in arenas, and full-campus coverage.

“We think that the market has room to grow in things like mission-critical communications at hospitals,” Levin told me. “Or with back-of-house applications at an arena, while the rest of the Wi-Fi is reserved for fans like we did with Ryder Cup.”

HPE’s approach also expands AI data capture and delivery capabilities, facilitating the creation of AI data lakes and the implementation of inference solutions.

Helping CSPs

HPE is also enabling cloud service providers to deploy private 5G networks rapidly. The solution complements existing Wi-Fi-based managed services, which will help telecom customers serve the expanding private cellular market and generate new revenue from their current enterprise customers.

Some highlights of the new announcement include:

• A 4G/5G core, HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers, SIM/eSIM cards, 4G/5G small cells and a management dashboard
• 4G/5G small cell radios with indoor and outdoor coverage, so there’s no need for separate/third-party management tools
• Simplified cloud-native management and automation for subscriber management, deployment management, core monitoring and radio monitoring
• Expanded AI data capture and delivery capabilities for building AI data lakes and activating inference solutions
• Zero-touch deployment in less than 30 minutes

Some final thoughts

HPE’s announcement follows its acquisition of Athonet, a private cellular technology provider based in Italy. It’s great to see HPE making good use of its acquired technology. The company appears to be headed in the right direction — with private cellular that is managed and works like Wi-Fi. HPE, with Aruba in the fold since 2015 and Athonet, a much more recent tuck-in announced about a year ago and completed late last year, is making the right moves.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

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