We are kicking off a series of ArubaOS 8 educational videos and blogs to provide you with more information about our new network operating system. In this first blog, we focus on market trends and why ArubaOS 8 is the right answer for your growing network.
Mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud and business-critical applications make us more productive and efficient, but at the same time, they drive up the demands on the network. Every day we see more devices coming to the network and more use cases such as mobile unified communications (UC) that demand complete coverage and robust application performance from the network.
James Cook University in Australia has experienced these challenges, and added more access points in its dorms to meet the demand as well as bringing more reliability into the network . "Due to our changing needs, we required improved network management, enhanced high availability and greater agility for responding to evolving constituent needs," said Ron Gardner, network engineer at the Townsville campus at James Cook University.
James Cook University is not alone facing these challenges. In fact, we commonly hear four challenges from customers across all industries:
- Always-on network with no downtime. Just imagine a university that wants to upgrade its network operating system. When do you think would be the best time to do that? During the night? When are all the students studying? On weekends when they are finishing projects? What do you think happens during an online exam if the network goes down due to controller failure?
- More intelligence and automation. How many times have you had problems connecting to Wi-Fi while on campus or in a lecture hall? How about your educational applications—or other mission-critical applications? Do users always have a consistent experience? Networks are becoming more complex across industries, and the only way that the network can scale and still provide a good user experience is to automate some functions and build in more intelligence, such as how to prioritize certain applications over the network.
- Simplified operation. Network admins face the daunting task of how to manage their networks every day as they scale as well as how to efficiently manage configurations of multiple branches. What are the tools that enable a network engineer or admin to efficiently configure a new site?
- Enhanced security. How do you mitigate security risk with all these new mobile and IoT devices? Eighty-four percent of companies that have adopted IoT report that they have already experienced an IoT-related breach, according to a study of 3,100 IT and business decision makers.
Are you experiencing these challenges in your network?
We have the answer for you. To learn about how ArubaOS 8 can meet your current network challenges, please check out my interview with the AOS Product Manager.
