HPE Makes 5G Play With Athonet Acquisition

by Ty Trumbull • Feb 24, 2023

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is investing in 5G with the acquisition of Athonet, a private cellular network technology provider. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This is technology M&A deal number 56 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2023. See more than 2,000 technology M&A deals involving MSPs, MSSPs & IT service providers listed here.

HPE Makes 5G Play With Athonet Acquisition

Athonet, founded in 2005, is based in Vicenza, Italy. The company has 99 employees listed on LinkedIn. Athonet’s areas of expertise are based in Telecommunications.

Athonet works with clients in various industries, including leading mobile operators, hospitals, airports, transportation ports, utilities, government, and public safety organizations. HPE says it will integrate Athonet’s technology into its existing CSP and Aruba networking enterprise offerings to create a private networking portfolio.

The incorporation of Athonet’s technology will allow HPE to deliver private networking capabilities directly to enterprises as part of HPE’s Aruba networking portfolio while also enabling communications service providers (CSPs) to quickly deploy private 5G networks for their customers, the company said.

HPE Acquires Athonet: Executive Commentary

Tom Craig, global vice president and general manager, Communications Technology Group at HPE, commented:

“Telco customers are looking for simpler ways to deploy private 5G networks to meet growing customer expectations at the connected edge. At the same time, enterprise customers are demanding a customized 5G experience with low-latency, segregated resources, extended range and security across campus and industrial environments that complement their existing wireless networks. With the acquisition of Athonet, HPE now has one of the most complete private 5G and Wi-Fi portfolios for CSP and enterprise customers – and we will offer it as a service through HPE GreenLake.”

Gianluca Verin, CEO and co-founder, Athonet, said:

“Athonet was founded to provide customers with private 4G and 5G solutions that deliver carrier-grade reliability and performance to suit their increasing and more challenging connectivity needs. We are excited to join HPE and combine our highly skilled teams as we expand our joint service provider offerings for the rapidly growing private 5G market and build on HPE’s strategy to be the leading edge-to-cloud solutions provider.”

HPE’s Edge-To-Cloud Push

HPE has been focused on its GreenLake cloud data platform, while will offer Athonet private 5G offerings, combining all costs for Wi-Fi and private 5G into a single subscription package, according to the company.

Recently, HPE announced the acquisition of open source machine learning (ML) pipeline automation startup Pachyderm to help bolster the platform. In 2021, Hewlett Packard Enterprise acquired Determined AI, an open source machine learning (ML) platform.