Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) this week added an 8-port switch to its portfolio that is designed for environments such as retail locations that require compact switches.

Announced at the National Retail Federation (NRF) 2026 conference, the HPE Aruba Networking CX 6000 Switch Series is designed to be deployed, for example, next to a checkout lane or in a crawl space overhead to provide access to a WiFi-7 compatible network.

HPE also has updated HPE Nonstop Compute NS9 X5 and NS5 X5 systems to enable the platform to scale up to 4,000 processors using multiple generations chips. Additionally, a kernel-level threading capability has been added to the Nonstop OS to both improve scaling and make it simpler to port modern applications to an IT platform that traces its lineage back to Tandem Computers.

Finally, HPE is also adding a Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to make it simpler for organizations to comply with data privacy regulations.

Ken Dellovo, networking product marketing manager for HPE, said that while these switches and systems have use cases that go beyond retail applications, HPE is making a concerted effort to launch a set of offerings that span everything from connecting applications running in a store to the processing of transactions and analytics in the back office.

The overall goal is to provide a set of comprehensive offerings that address the full spectrum of requirements from the network up to the servers needed to run applications, added Dellovo.

Additionally, line of business (LOB) executives are also now exerting more influence over the IT platforms that organizations are adopting, he noted. That shift is especially apparent in a retail sector where organizations are now investing in more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications that have a direct impact on revenue, said Dellovo.

Regardless of how any new IT initiative is funded, it’s apparent many IT environments are becoming more distributed with each passing day. Following its acquisition of Juniper Networks, HPE is now making a stronger case for standardizing on networking, servers and storage infrastructure provided by the same IT vendor. HPE is also in the process of blending Juniper’s Mist cloud platform with the HPE Aruba Central management platform in a way that can be integrated with HPE’s GreenLake and OpsRamp AIOps services and platforms.

The case for any new platform, of course, is always easier to make whenever a new IT initiative is being launched versus trying to replace an incumbent vendor but ultimately, the decision about what IT platforms to employ is generally made by the IT team that has to support them. It is, however, usually a lot easier to attain budget allocation when a project is being advanced with the aid of a LOB sponsor.

Hopefully, distributed computing environments will become easier to manage in the age of AI. In fact, it’s probable IT teams will soon find themselves deploying applications at much higher levels of scale. The issue then becomes finding a way to deploy the IT infrastructure needed in a way that doesn’t necessarily require as much IT expertise to manage.