Aruba strengthens its relationship with AWS, showcases new networking solutions

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company has brought the Asia Pacific (APAC) leg of its signature event-Atmosphere 2019-to Sydney, Australia, for the first time. The event showcases Aruba’s newest series of networking solutions as well as partnerships designed for businesses to proactively optimize network management. A major theme will be the importance of analytics enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI).

“Aruba’s aim is to help our customers capitalize on user experiences that are dynamic and personalized,” said Steve Wood, vice president of Asia Pacific & Japan at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company. “With Aruba Central, which was designed from the ground up to deliver secure connectivity and reliability, we have integrated AI-based insights and assurance to help customers simplify, secure, and accelerate their networking operations to gain the competitive edge for increasingly sophisticated cloud workloads.”

Siloed network management solutions are creating complexity and increasing time to remediation. Aruba made significant enhancements to Aruba Central to accelerate IT operations and allow IT professionals time to focus on innovation. The software-defined branch (SD-Branch) and SD-WAN, optimized with AI-based insights and assurance, have resulted in the following benefits -

Time-savings in resolving infrastructure problems before they impact the organization - With the integration of Aruba’s Analytics and Assurance capabilities into the Aruba Central unified cloud-based platform, IT professionals can quickly remediate intermittent network issues while also proactively identifying how to optimize customers’ infrastructures to ensure world-class experiences.

Reduce operational cost and address hybrid cloud connectivity for distributed enterprises - Enhanced with improved branch management and orchestration capabilities, and managed via Aruba Central, SD-Branch and SD-WAN can now centrally monitor and control business-intent policies to reduce the need for skilled support and maintenance professionals on site, which improves operational agility.

Easy-to-deploy, flexible and secure overlay topologies in a large-scale edge infrastructure -

SD-WAN Orchestrator Now available in Aruba Central to enable trouble free gateway provisioning at scale, this cloud-native, multi-tenant control plane aids in administrative cost savings and simplifies management of wide area networks.

Software as a service (SaaS) Express prioritization feature not only enhances the performance of SaaS applications but also provides visibility about the end-user experience for business-critical applications, such as Microsoft Office 365, Skype, Salesforce and many more.

Aruba Virtual Gateways, now available for both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), cost-effectively extends network and security policies to workloads running in the cloud.

Automate unique policy enforcement - Aruba ClearPass Device Insight provides Internet of Things (IoT) visibility and security by employing automated device discovery and machine learning-based fingerprinting and identification. When used in conjunction with Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager and Aruba’s dynamic segmentation security capabilities, networking and security teams reduce risk by eliminating device blind spots on the network.

Leveraging Aruba’s cloud-based solutions, leading aged care provider Catholic Healthcare recently rolled out Aruba Central, hosted on AWS, across its 46 locations in Australia.

“We reached a point where we didn’t have the manpower within our IT team to sustain our previous network management platform, which had become increasingly time consuming,” said Moet Sela, Infrastructure Manager, Catholic Healthcare. “Moving to Aruba Central has provided us with a centralized network location where we can monitor, update and enhance the network, all from a single pane of glass.”

The deployment of Aruba Central significantly improved efficiencies for the IT team at Catholic Healthcare, allowing them to get back to their core mission of providing a high quality of service to residents. As well as simplifying traditional management tasks for IT teams, Aruba Central provides proactive monitoring and analytics in all phases of the connection process. This connectivity health feature collects and measures key performance indicators to isolate the root cause and impact of connection failures.

“Aruba’s wireless network and cloud management solution can dramatically improve our residents’ quality of life and care. Aruba Central’s robust management solution future proofs our wireless network, supporting the continued growth of the digital care industry, which will require secure and reliable connectivity,” Sela added. “Our end game is to make sure our resident’s lead a happy and healthy retirement; Aruba Central helps to place us above our competitors and ultimately enables us to be a better facility for our residents.”

Aruba deepens strategic relationship with AWS

As workloads become more complex and the workforce gets more distributed, businesses must adopt a modern and sophisticated cloud strategy that drives innovative business solutions and competitive differentiation. Aruba’s partnerships are driven by the goal of empowering its customers and partners to adapt, evolve, and navigate today’s dynamic economic environment as they digitally transform their businesses. Through Aruba Central, a single pane of glass interface lessen siloed network operations by presenting all device information, AI-based insights, user-centric statistics, and IoT device profiles in one place, allowing organizations to quickly obtain the information needed on-demand, making the truly connected branch office a reality for enterprises.

Aruba and AWS have deepened their strategic relationship to provide customers with a more cloud-based SD-branch service. From providing a virtual gateway for SD-Branch customers that allows their branch users to more securely and efficiently access corporate services hosted in their Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) and now extending that support to AWS Transit Gateway. This collaboration aims at simplifying connectivity for SD-Branch users who have services running across multiple Amazon VPCs. By leveraging AWS Transit Gateway, Aruba SD-Branch users need only create one virtual gateway connection, and from there, through connectivity to their AWS Transit Gateway, they can connect to up to 5000 of their Amazon VPCs in that region.

“As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption, they continue to look for simplified branch networking services and orchestration,” said Joshua Hofmann, Director, Partner Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Our collaboration with Aruba will allow organizations to increase efficiency, speed, and strengthen security while devoting more of their resources to delivering value to their end-customers.”

The annual event brings together networking professionals and mobility experts to experience Aruba’s latest products and solutions, and features insightful keynote sessions from major industry experts who are driving the next wave of networking innovation.