PwC Legal advises Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the post-deal integration of Athonet, Axis Security, and Pachyderm
Dusseldorf, October 25, 2023
PricewaterhouseCoopers Legal AG (PwC Legal) has been engaged by Hewlett Packard Enterprise to advise it on the post-deal integration of the business groups Athonet, Axis Security, and Pachyderm. These projects will be overseen by the Global Transformations Team under the leadership of Ursula Braun, who was appointed as a Local Partner effective July 1, 2023. This appointment highlights the significance and reputation of the Global Transformations Team well beyond the borders of Germany.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is a US-based technology company headquartered in Texas, that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open and intelligent technology solutions as a service. With offerings spanning Cloud Services, Computing, High Performance Computing & AI, Intelligent Edge, Software, and Storage, HPE provides a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, helping customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance.
Athonet has more than 15 years of experience in providing 4G and 5G mobile core solutions to customers and partners worldwide. The company is an award-winning technology pioneer with over 450 successful customer implementations in various industries, including leading mobile network operators, hospitals, airports, seaports, utilities, government agencies, and public safety organizations. By integrating Athonet's technology, HPE can deliver private network capacity as part of HPE's Aruba network portfolio directly to enterprises, while enabling communication service providers to quickly deploy private 5G networks for their customers.
Axis Security's Security Services Edge (SSE) platform addresses the need for improved application performance and increased network security as the number of remote users increases and companies continue to move their applications further into the cloud. Axis Security's SSE offerings provide access to corporate and public cloud resources, and the company's cloud-based platform will build on the existing Aruba software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and network firewall offering. This combination offers a complete edge-to-cloud Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution, ensuring that zero-trust security controls can be applied to people and devices, regardless of where they connect.
Pachyderm offers open-source-based software for automating reproducible pipelines for machine learning focused on large-scale AI applications. HPE will integrate Pachyderm's software into its existing supercomputing and AI solutions to better position itself in this rapidly growing field.
These projects were led by Ursula Braun, who was appointed as a Local Partner at PwC Legal on July 1, 2023. Ursula is 37 years old and began her career at the international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer before joining PwC Legal on January 1, 2019, following a stint at the German law firm Görg. She is part of the Global Transformations Team, led by Partner Dr. Frederic Mirza Khanian, consisting of approximately 20 other attorneys and over 100 experts in areas such as tax, valuations, finance, and delivering deal value. The team offers holistic support for cross-border reorganization projects, including projects for Bayer, SAP, Sennheiser, Merck, and LEONI. HPE has also utilized the services of PwC Legal and the Global Transformations Team in the past, including in the integration of Cray Computers, Silver Peak, Ampool, Determined AI, CloudPhysics, and Zerto.
These recent successes underline the outstanding significance of the Global Transformations Team, which continues to be one of the fastest-growing areas of PwC Legal. Ursula's appointment as a Local Partner is truly well-deserved and a recognition of her outstanding performance over the past years. Furthermore, the appointment of Dr. Frederic Mirza Khanian as the Global Legal Business Solutions Leader emphasizes the international importance of the team's work.
Core team advisors in Germany:
Ursula Braun (Federführung), Dr. Frederic Mirza Khanian, Janaina Kutzner, Mathilde Poncelet, Sabine Weiss, Dr. Arne Pidun, Timm Berlemann, Leire Montero Sanchez.
About PwC Legal Business Solutions:
In our global, rapidly changing business world, cooperation, restructuring, transactions, financing and social responsibility are topics that increasingly concern our clients. They need legal certainty for a wide range of complex tasks. That is why we advise them holistically and in close cooperation with PwC’s tax, human resources and finance experts and our international legal network in over 100 countries. Whether a globally active company, a public corporation or a wealthy private individual, every client has a personal contact at our firm who supports them responsibly in all matters of commercial law. In this way, we help our clients to secure their economic success in the long term.
PwC Legal Business Solutions in Germany. More than 370 lawyers at 18 locations. Integrated, tech-powered legal advice.
About PwC Germany:
Our clients face diverse challenges, strive to put new ideas into practice and seek expert advice. They turn to us for comprehensive support and practical solutions that deliver maximum value. Whether for a global player, a family business or a public institution, we leverage all of our assets: experience, industry knowledge, high standards of quality, commitment to innovation and the resources of our expert network in 149 countries. Building a trusting and cooperative relationship with our clients is particularly important to us – the better we know and understand our clients’ needs, the more effectively we can support them.
PwC Germany. More than 15,000 dedicated people at 20 locations. €3.05 billion in turnover. The leading auditing and consulting firm in Germany.
