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Cisco CFO Critiques HPE's Juniper Acquisition, Sparking Customer Confusion in Networking Market

Juniper

Business Honor
15 December, 2025

Mark Patterson warns that the $14 billion merger complicates buyer decisions amid rising competition in enterprise networking.

Following Cisco Chief Financial Officer Mark Patterson's recent comments regarding HPE's acquisition of Juniper Networks at the Barclays Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, the rivalry between Cisco and HPE grew tenfold. Patterson remarked that this merger has created new levels of confusion within the Networking Market, particularly for firms that are dependent on Wireless Infrastructure. He stated that the overlap between HPE and Juniper's offerings is causing many buyers to be hesitant when trying to grasp what the future of the two companies will look like together. Cisco has benefited from this uncertainty as more customers re-evaluate their long-term vendor relationships.

According to Patterson, wireless is the strongest segment for both HPE and Juniper, and this has contributed significantly to customer confusion as both companies converge. This sentiment is echoed by Scott Herren, Cisco's former CFO, who has stated that because of HPE's announced acquisition of Juniper, many enterprise customers have begun to evaluate the relationships they currently have with both companies. Cisco's wireless business was reported to be performing well, as evidenced by orders greater than $1 million growing by over 20% in Q4.

The competition between Juniper and Cisco has a long history. In addition to being the largest networking company in the world, Cisco has been a prominent player in the market for many years competing with Juniper in the areas of switching, routing and security. HPE's motive for acquiring Juniper was to enhance its position within the enterprise networking space, and to capitalize on the opportunity created by its acquisition of Aruba Networks in 2015, which led to HPE splitting off into two separate companies, HPE and HP Inc. Since that time, HPE has shifted its focus primarily to servers, storage, and data center equipment and has identified networking as one of its primary growth segments.