As the leader for Aruba, HPE’s Intelligent Edge business, I spend a good portion of my time talking to customers and partners about the strategic goals of their businesses. Our conversations typically cover a wide range of business concerns such as workforce productivity, operational efficiency, automation, and network security, yet recently rising to the top of this list is sustainability.

Increases in governmental regulations, skyrocketing energy prices, and the impact of extreme environmental events in their communities are forcing companies to evaluate their carbon footprint and to find ways to reduce their emissions to become net zero by 2050. While some companies are further along than others, a recent Forrester survey found that 58% of Global Fortune 200 companies have named a sustainability lead, and 55% have established greenhouse gas emission targets.

As I previously highlighted, Aruba’s focus is on enabling efficient IT operations with the goal of minimizing environmental impacts across the product lifecycle and reducing the total cost of ownership for our customers. We approach efficiently IT using the following framework:

• Energy efficiency — Deliver an optimum level of power, storage, and connectivity with the lowest possible input of energy.
• Equipment efficiency — Maximize IT processing power and storage capabilities with fewer IT assets.
• Resource efficiency — Engineer products to work efficiently within data canters and at the edge, while requiring the least amount of support equipment and staff for power conversion, cooling, and resiliency.

Maximizing efficiency in each of these categories requires a modern network architecture designed for agility and performance at scale. Every element of the ecosystem contributes to the overall efficiency of the network, and when considering the sustainability attributes of individual products, we look at three main functions:

• How they are made – Activities related to the creation, production, and lifecycle management
• How they work – Operational properties that optimize power efficiency and performance
• How they are used – Use cases that help customers lower their carbon footprint

How Aruba products are made

How a product is made has a significant effect on its value to our customers, including features supported, quality of service offered, cost of ownership, and environmental impact. When developing a new product, Aruba considers every element of the product lifecycle, including design, material composition and acquisition, production, packaging, transportation, and post-use disposition to ensure they meet our customers’ evolving needs and expectations.

How Aruba products lessen their environmental impact:

• Our products are free of heavy metals and ozone-depleting components
• New products are designed to use low-halogen PCBs
• Our products are engineered to be easily recycled
• All products are manufactured in compliance with strict regulatory and HPE-directed requirements
• Our product packaging is comprised of up to 80% recycled materials
• We also offer valuable lifecycle management services that alleviate the burden of managing and responsibly dispositioning network assets. With global reach and the largest technology recovery centers in the world, HPE offers IT asset lifecycle solutions to help customers reclaim asset value, simplify lifecycle management activities, and create circularity as they migrate to HPE GreenLake for Aruba.

How Aruba products work

How they work is equally as crucial to our products’ performance and sustainability profile. We use innovations that enable maximum power efficiencies such as power management features, platform operation, built-in intelligence, streamlined workflows, and standards compliance.

How Aruba products work more sustainably:

• Patented intelligent power management features in Aruba access points minimize power consumption by consuming only 50% of the total power capacity in real-world deployments.
• Energy-efficient Ethernet and the use of 80+ certified power supplies on Aruba switches reduce power consumption by 50% and – up to 80% or more during periods of low data activity.
• Cloud-based network management hosted in energy-efficient data centers is reported to be 3.6 times more efficient than traditional enterprise data center operations.

The AI and automation in Aruba’s management platform, Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), diagnoses network issues in real-time, accelerating IT response, lowering help desk tickets, and enabling efficient power usage. Inefficient networks are analogous to leaky water pipes. Just as leaky pipes wastewater, inefficient networks waste energy.

How Aruba products are used

It is also important to examine the ways our customers leverage our products to deliver value to their businesses, including secure high-performance connectivity that empowers workforce productivity, streamlined workflows that drive IT resource optimization, and additional applications that enable control of key resource consumption.

The post Aruba’s Sustainability Framework appeared first on The Integrator.

Walk us through the newest and innovative solutions that Aruba has introduced to the small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the market

AMOL MITRA: Most SMBs do not have IT staff within the organization. So, technology products and solutions need to be easy to use, plug and play, affordable, and meet the security requirements of these businesses. Thus, we decided, when we embarked on this journey, to deliver customized solutions for SMBs.

We created a new brand, ‘Aruba Instant On’, that differentiates our SMB offering from our enterprise offering. Under the brand, we introduced a set of (APs), switches, accessories like transceivers, and a mobile app through which businesses can manage and configure the entire network environment.

With the need for increased speed, capacity, and scalability, we initially launched Aruba Instant On APs three years ago, now featuring Wi-Fi 6, that delivers blazing-fast performance, greater capacity to handle more devices simultaneously, and greater performance. These APs are perfect for small businesses with expanding mobile, cloud, and IoT requirements.

We will continue to lead innovation in the future and deliver more high-performance, secure access points, switches, and technology that is purpose-built for SMBs. Aruba Instant On portfolio is ideal for Small Businesses/Offices and institutions in hospitality, healthcare, and education.

Elaborate on the competitive advantages and scalability that SMEs find after turning to Aruba’s network technologies

AMOL MITRA: Besides vendors who compete with us in the enterprise space, there are other specific SMB networking vendors in the marketplace. So, we realized that in order to create a competitive advantage, we not only need to create brand differentiation but also create product and solution differentiation as well.

When compared to the competition, I believe the following four areas are where our value proposition and differentiation lie:

• The first is “ease of use,” which is hugely important in this marketplace. Besides the cloud-based app, we
  

  Amol Mitra (VP and GM – Worldwide – SMB) -Aruba

  also included intelligent automation through artificial intelligence (AI) to make sure that customers don’t need to spend a lot of time configuring or managing the product

• The second is security. We have made sure that our products have hardened security. We have taken our enterprise security feature set and replicated it into our SMB solutions
• Next, this business is channel-led and built through our broad channel ecosystem. So we have made sure that our channel partners are engaged and enabled from a pre-sales and a post-sales perspective to deliver whatever support and service is required by customers
• And finally, everything we do is centered around our customers. We build features that are tailored to the needs of individual customers and SMB businesses. For example, if you have a small coffee shop and you want to have a guest network that is segmented from the administrative network and the staff network, it is a one-click capability that we provide

Give insights into Aruba’s latest undertaking concerning hybrid work and employee collaboration and their success

AMOL MITRA: Our products are inherently built for a hybrid work environment. We have a specific configuration for users who work from home, office, or in a hybrid mode. With a one-click button, you can configure it for a hybrid work environment. All this is held in the cloud and managed through a mobile app.

With Aruba’s products, a user can have the same environment, configuration, and policy management irrespective of the workplace. There is zero configuration change that is required with our products.

Discuss Aruba’s Middle East plans and business strategies for the SMB sector in the upcoming years

JACOB CHACKO: We have been at the forefront of innovation in the enterprise networking segment, helping large enterprises meet their connectivity, security, and financial requirements across campus, branch, data center, and remote worker environments. Our strategy is to extend our leadership in the Enterprise sector to the SMB segment by providing them with ‘enterprise grade’, feature-rich solutions at an attractive price point, that are simple, secure, and easy to deploy. Aruba’s SMB networking solutions deliver intuitive management, automated intelligence, and security features to save time and gain a competitive edge.

Aruba Instant On is a big technology focus for us when it comes to SMBs. They are wi-fi access points (APs) purpose-built for small businesses that just work—reliably, securely, and remarkably simple, right out of the box. SMBs can create “Always On” networks with little to no IT support required. It’s easy to set up and manage remotely with a cloud-based mobile app.

Our go-to-market strategy is through our SMB-focused partners and distributors. Stocking is a key area of focus for us when it comes to SMBs. We are making concerted efforts to build a strong supply chain network to ensure that our partners have stocks readily available at any given point in time.

What is special this year for Aruba GITEX for SMBs?

Jacob Chacko (Regional Director – ME, KSA, and SA) – Aruba

JACOB CHACKO: At GITEX Global 2022, Aruba will be exhibiting under the theme “Making Connections, Anywhere” – creating the connections that power businesses and the world. In its 13th appearance at the event, the company will demonstrate its cloud-native approach to helping customers meet their connectivity, security, and financial requirements across campus, branch, data center, and remote worker environments covering all aspects of wired, wireless LAN, and wide area networking (WAN). At the event, Aruba will demonstrate its latest technologies addressing the digital transformation needs of regional enterprises including Wi-Fi 6E and cloud-managed networking, SD-WAN & SASE, Aruba User Experience Insight, and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS).

We invite SMB company executives to visit us at stand number H7-A1, at GITEX to explore our midsize business cloud-managed networking solutions that deliver fast, reliable, and scalable wired and wireless connectivity. Our technology experts will help SMBs rightsize their networks based on their business needs and space, and also provide demos of Aruba Instant On, designed for providing great wi-fi coverage and blazing-fast speeds.

The post With Dynamic Segmentation of Networking Products, Aruba Becomes the Most Reliable Partner of SMBs appeared first on The Integrator.

“Our ICSA Labs Secure SD-WAN Certification includes rigorous security-related testing and robust SD-WAN functionality testing to validate that the SD-WAN product is secure and properly enforces consistent policy for both WAN-specific functions and security functions,” said Jack Walsh, security programs manager at ICSA Labs.

Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise SD-WAN provides comprehensive security services at campus, branch, data center, and cloud locations including next-generation firewall, IDS/IPS, and DDoS detection and remediation. With these new features, EdgeConnect aims to replace outdated and difficult-to-manage physical firewalls at branch locations while delivering consistent security for all users, from any network location, from any device, and wherever applications are hosted. EdgeConnect provides an enhanced and comprehensive security offering for enterprises that want to establish consistent, secure, and predictable experiences across multiple locations over the WAN.

Damon Ennis, Vice President of Engineering at Aruba said, “this provides customers with well-recognized and respected third party validation of the comprehensiveness of our native EdgeConnect Enterprise advanced SD-WAN and security capabilities that connect and protect the network, from edge to cloud, across the WAN. These new features enhance our comprehensive security offerings, giving our customers flexibility and confidence when implementing security controls at the branch and across the WAN as part of network and security transformation on their journey to SASE.”

The post Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise Attains ICSA Labs Secure SD-WAN Certification appeared first on The Integrator.

There’s no denying that COVID-19 had an irreversible impact across every industry, perhaps most notably the healthcare sector. Two years ago, healthcare providers and facilities had to make huge changes to adjust to the influx of COVID patients.

From telemedicine to patient portals, new technologies are still being deployed today to help the system fight back against the backlog of patients needing care, as well as deliver the improved and more seamless service that customers now expect. This has meant that the IoT device explosion is on the rise across the healthcare sector. Deloitte predicts that the IoMT market will grow in Europe from $ 12 billion to $44billion by 2025.

As healthcare organizations continue to introduce IoT devices to their operations, their digital success stories depend on one fundamental component – a reliable network. Resilient and secure connectivity must underpin every institution’s digital roadmap, upholding and progressing the convergence of IT, patient care, and operational efficiencies. So, just how do they achieve this?

Step 1: Upgrading the Network

Many legacy networks that IT teams in the healthcare sector are pushed to work with were designed during a pre-COVID time when applications were static. These outdated networks not only create their roadblocks but trying to adapt them to support today’s demands can also result in huge operational issues. An IT team tasked with scaling their network up to support a surge in users and devices across various locations would be faced with having to manually process every connection type and device if a network hasn’t been modernized.

Networks based on traditional VLAN architectures will struggle to accommodate huge amounts of IoT devices, so modernizing WAN solutions with SD-WAN should be seen as the next step for healthcare organizations. Offering greater efficiency and cost savings, hospitals and clinics can also opt for an approach that doesn’t involve the wholesale replacement of their current infrastructures, but rather look for options that coexist with current architectures.

Step 2: Leveraging Automation

With a modern network in place and now set up for scale and connectivity, health organizations must then look towards leveraging the benefits of automation.

As all these IoT devices churn out large quantities of health information, automation merged with other smart technologies such as machine learning can help turn into actionable insights that healthcare organizations can use to build new solutions.

Here, simplified workflows can also help alleviate administrative burdens and redeploy precious time so that staff can focus on patient care. From apps that help patients manage their care themselves, to online symptom checkers and e-triage AI tools, virtual agents that can carry out tasks in hospitals, or a bionic pancreas to help patients with diabetes, adding AI to your technology arsenal can greatly enhance patient care.

Step 3: Security

While a modern network and the IoT devices and AI solutions it can support have the potential to transform healthcare in practice, the growing use of connective devices also poses increased risk for healthcare organizations. In a hospital setting where staff, patients, and visitors are always on the go, multiple new devices are constantly joining and leaving the network. Now, securing the network is more important than ever.

The key to a secure network is visibility. This means that everything, from sensors to visitors’ phones, needs to be individually identified, secured, and monitored. By ‘fingerprinting’ every device this way, any vulnerability can be spotted and addressed immediately before it is exploited. This level of nuance is also particularly vital in healthcare. In life-or-death environments, critical-care devices that need to run continuously can’t be treated the same way as those which can be disconnected if needed. Instead, Zero Trust architectures ensure that all devices and users trying to access the network are identified and authenticated, before providing the least amount of access required through a predefined security policy.

Conclusion

The digital transformation of our healthcare system is being driven by the benefits of a truly IoT-device-connected environment. However, to unlock the promises of this future, it is fundamental that organizations have a network in place to support this. By deploying a modern and secure network and leveraging automation, healthcare organizations can drive operational efficiencies, redeploy employee time and ultimately enhance patient care.

The post Network Modernization: The Key to the Future of Healthcare appeared first on The Integrator.

Written by: Jacob Chacko, Regional Director at Aruba HPE

After over a decade of 4G connectivity, leaders in global telecoms are now racing to roll out the fifth generation of broadband cellular technology and meet today’s twin challenges of increased network activity and bandwidth demands. The pressure to upgrade has only become greater due to the pandemic, which shifted the global workforce from the office to the home, and in doing so greatly increased the number of digital touchpoints.

Jacob Chacko, Regional Director – MEA, SA at Aruba, HPE

Research conducted by Markets & Markets indicates that the enterprise 5G market is expected to grow from $2.1 billion in 2021 to $10.9 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 31.8%. In the short term, the task at hand for service providers involves enabling IoT communications, fixed wireless access, edge analytics, and enhanced mobile broadband. To achieve this, service providers will have to lean on existing technologies. SD-WAN is one of the key technologies that have the potential to aid service providers in their delivery of a higher quality network experience to meet ever-increasing user expectations.

5G: Untapped Potential

According to a study conducted by IDC, it is estimated that there will be 51 million IoT devices by 2021. The advent of edge computing will serve to enable this influx of IoT devices. However, as connectivity increases, so too does the amount of data that must be processed, both in real-time and close to the source.

Facilitating huge volumes of data at high speeds is a key function and much-promised benefit of 5G. Yet despite providing higher bandwidth to operations, 5G is limited in range. It is expected that 5G networks will be powered by hundreds of thousands of small cells. However, the denser the network of cells, the more difficult they become to manage, operate and maintain, therefore the crux of the issue becomes not only the optimization of these networks but also the automation.

SD-WAN: The Enabler

Connection and integration across the relevant compute edges are integral to any 5G operation. SD-WAN platforms can help service providers by allowing for automation and aiding in the optimization of traffic and management of 5G cells. Unlike a traditional router-centric WAN architecture, a Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is designed to support applications in on-premises data centers, public or private clouds, and SaaS services.

SD-WAN identifies applications and provides intelligent routing, with each class of application receiving the appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) and security policy enforcement. This quality in particular is vital in the enablement of 5G. Through SD-WAN’s ability to incorporate machine learning, it enables networks to adapt to varying circumstances and automatically route high-bandwidth traffic to 5G cells and the edge.

Ensuring high-quality user experience for 5G is paramount, therefore service providers must evaluate SD-WAN vendors on the following:

• Granular, intelligent application-driven routing. The ability to automatically prioritize traffic based on bandwidth should be a key area of concern. Lower bandwidth traffic should be routed to other available transport such as LTE or broadband, allowing for high-bandwidth traffic like video streaming to be routed through a 5G cell.
• Centralized management. Facilitating the management, maintenance, and operation of edges and 5G cells by intelligently rerouting traffic during provisions and upgrades. When enterprises deploy new applications or when a security policy change is necessary, a business-driven SD-WAN enables these changes to be delivered in minutes, while simultaneously minimizing the opportunity for human error.
• Machine learning. Automation is key. Any SD-WAN vendor must guarantee that their network can adapt to varying conditions in real-time and provide optimal routing to the edges and 5G cells.
• Security integration with business-intent networking. Cybersecurity is an ever-present issue. By directing traffic to the right security services and enabling application-driven security policies enforced from a centralized position, service providers will not have to compromise on either cost or performance.
• Virtual WAN overlays. Quality of service is hugely important, and network resources must be flexible and optimized. 5G networks depend on network slicing, whereby each slice receives a unique set of resources. By using both technologies in combination, service providers can steer critical traffic to the 5G network where it can be isolated to a particular slice depending on its specific requirements.

As 5G and edge computing adoption increases, so too will the demands of users. Service providers must be ready to provide an ever-present and high-performing network. The initial success of 5G deployment will demand a network that has automation and security at the center of its operation, like the one offered by SD-WAN.

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