We are thrilled to announce that HPE Aruba Networking’s EdgeConnect SD-WAN solutions have been named the winner in the CRN 2023 Annual Report Card (ARC) Awards for SD-WAN, achieving a full sweep of the category.
Based on research conducted by The Channel Company, the annual CRN ARC Awards recognize companies that provide best-in-class products and partner programs to solution providers in the channel. In this year's survey, 3,300 solution providers across North America rated 68 vendor partners on four criteria: product innovation, support, partnership, and managed cloud services.
HPE Aruba Networking’s EdgeConnect SD-WAN solutions stood out as the clear winner, sweeping across the ARC’s criteria of:
- Product innovation
- Support
- Partnership
- Managed cloud services
In addition to SD-WAN, HPE Aruba Networking earned top honors in multiple other categories including:
- Enterprise Networking Infrastructure
- Enterprise Wireless LANs
- SMB Networking
The EdgeConnect SD-WAN Advantage
As applications are moving to the cloud and hybrid workers connect from anywhere, router-based traditional network architectures have become obsolete and increase security risks. They typically require backhauling cloud-destined traffic, from branch offices to the data center, to perform security inspection, impacting application performance and user productivity. Additionally, branch offices often face an increasing complexity as they have been stacking multiple networking and security devices. The proliferation of IoT devices have also significantly increased the attack surface leading to further security breaches.
In contrast to similar products in the market, HPE Aruba Networking’s EdgeConnect SD-WAN solutions offer five key advantages:
- Improved Performance - EdgeConnect SD-WAN provides reliable and business-driven connectivity in branch offices by combining multiple links including MPLS, internet and 5G. Through acceleration techniques such as Path Conditioning, EdgeConnect SD-WAN ensures a performance similar to private-line connections over internet links, by mitigating the effects of dropped packets commonly experienced with internet links. This allows organizations to reduce their dependency on MPLS and reduce costs. The solution also always selects the best path for each application, by leveraging real-time traffic observations, over the WAN and the cloud. With WAN optimization, EdgeConnect SD-WAN overcomes the adverse effects of latency and bandwidth limitations, relying on TCP acceleration, data compression and data deduplication.
- Multi-Cloud-Ready - EdgeConnect SD-WAN intelligently steers application traffic to the cloud based on predefined business and security policies and eliminates the need to backhaul all cloud-destined traffic to the data center. Trusted application traffic such as real time voice and video traffic, is directly routed to the cloud while other traffic is routed to an SSE (Security Service Edge) service or to the data center for security inspection. It also provides end-to-end connectivity to cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud and Google Cloud or middle-mile providers like Equinix and Megaport, enabling multi-cloud networking with improved performance and security.
- Reduced Complexity and Increased Security at the Branch - In addition to business-driven routing capabilities, EdgeConnect SD-WAN includes a built-in next-generation firewall that enables organizations to replace not only traditional routers, but also legacy firewalls in branch offices. The built-in firewall includes advanced security capabilities such as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and IDS/IPS (Intrusion Detection and Prevention) to protect branch workers from malicious activities. Threat logging can even be streamed to a third-party SIEM solution to monitor threats in real time. By consolidating branch network and security functions, organizations reduce their hardware footprint. EdgeConnect SD-WAN can even be installed as a virtual appliance, further reducing the hardware footprint. With EdgeConnect SD-WAN, all policies are managed centrally and pushed to branch offices in minutes through zero-touch provisioning, greatly eliminating configuration errors.
- Enhanced IoT Security - In the recent years, the number of IoT devices have skyrocketed. IoT devices are difficult to protect as they use a simple design and don’t include a security agent. Paired with HPE Aruba Networking’s ClearPass Policy Manager, EdgeConnect SD-WAN enforces a Zero Trust architecture that dynamically segments the network and applies least privilege access principles. It provides end-to-end segmentation, based on role and identity, from the LAN and across the WAN to isolate the unsecure IoT traffic from mission-critical applications. This ensures that users and IoT devices only reach network destinations consistent with their role in the business.
- Faster Journey to SASE - Last but not least, EdgeConnect SD-WAN is part of the HPE Aruba Networking’s unified SASE platform and tightly integrates with HPE Aruba Networking SSE (Security Service Edge) to ensure a faster adoption and seamless deployment of SASE. HPE Aruba Networking SSE includes advanced security capabilities such as ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Architecture), SWG (Secure Web Gateway) and CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker). These security solutions provide a secure access to remote workers based on least-privilege access principles enabling organizations to replace legacy VPN solutions. They also help protect sensitive corporate data hosted in cloud applications and ensure that users securely browse the web, keeping them off malicious activities. For organizations preferring to adopt SASE with their choice of security services or to seamlessly integrate with an existing security ecosystem, EdgeConnect SD-WAN tightly integrates with third-party cloud security vendors.
HPE Aruba Networking’s EdgeConnect SD-WAN product portfolio provides three onramps to the SD-WAN fabric:
- EdgeConnect SD-WAN allows IT teams to architect an advanced secure SD-WAN edge that delivers maximum application performance and security at the branch.
- EdgeConnect SD-Branch consolidates branch networking components for maximum integration across WLAN, LAN and SD-WAN.
- EdgeConnect Microbranch is ideally suited for microbranch or work-from-home sites, using a range of remote APs.
To learn more about the EdgeConnect SD-WAN product portfolio, please visit our website.
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