This week I have been attending HPE Tech Jam in Orlando. For those who don’t know, this is HPE’s SE and Partner event full of technical training and keynotes. This year it was held at the Disney Dolphin and Swan Resort and convention center.

Going in, I had no idea what to expect as this was the first time that my company was invited. Like most tech conferences nowadays it had the standard keynote and breakout session format with a trade show exhibition hall. Unlike most, it was relatively small. I’m not sure what the exact attendance numbers are, but it reminded me of my earliest Cisco Networkers conference in New Orleans that was around 3-5K attendees. Classes were well attended, but there was very little contention so you could get into the classes you wanted.

The classes were the meat and potatoes of the conference and were executed well. The speakers were almost all technical, and the content was amazing. One of the tidbits that I hadn’t learned yet about HPE Aruba was that the switch stacks have hitless ISSU. That’s a feature that should have been touted a lot more in my campus access training. It’s a game changer compared to Cisco, especially for verticals like hospitals. As a corollary, I found out that Arista does this, too.

SSE and SD-WAN were a big focus for me this week as we’re working on several projects related to HPE Aruba Edge Connect (Silverpeak) and HPE Aruba SSE (Axis Security). While there is still some work to be done in the integration of the Axis product line, the offering is a solid SASE play. The engineers from Axis have a wealth of technical prowess and I look forward to seeing what they do with the product next.

At a Glance

• Great technical courses.
• In-person networking opportunities need more structure (Social Media Hub)
• The venue was great, albeit expensive for food
• Caffeine needed more diversity, getting soda was hard.
• Conference food was sub par

Ben’s Take

If you are invited to an HPE Tech Jam, take the opportunity to learn some new things and meet new people. The smaller format really does allow the instructors to interact more. I look forward to HPE Tech Jam 2026. If anyone from HPE is reading this, there are a lot of cities that can host a conference this size that are much cheaper than Orlando and Vegas. How about we meet in New Orleans next year?