<p>➀ HPE finalized its acquisition of Juniper Networks after 18 months, completing the $14 billion deal following a DOJ settlement requiring divestiture of its Aruba Instant On business and AI Ops licensing;</p><p>➁ The merger strengthens HPE's networking portfolio, positioning it to compete with Cisco and NVIDIA in enterprise/service provider markets and AI cluster networking;</p><p>➂ Key challenges include integrating product roadmaps and challenging NVIDIA's dominance in AI infrastructure East-West networking with Juniper's UltraEthernet technology.</p>