Customers, employees, and business executives now expect consumerized, cloud-like experiences for every technology-driven interaction. Unfortunately, corporate networks—the means by which IT delivers these modern experiences—have largely been stuck in the past.
No organization can afford to take days or weeks to set up a network in a new location. New network capabilities need to be deployed quickly. Changes to security policies must be implemented immediately. And, as we’ve seen prominently as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, IT needs to swiftly adapt to changing business conditions. In this case, equipping workers with seamless access to critical applications, no matter where they need to connect.
Moreover, networks now support tens of thousands of new IoT devices—well beyond the scale of manual, human-driven operations. So IT leaders are looking to AI and machine learning to gain greater visibility and simpler ways to manage and optimize networks.
This need for speed, scale and agility is already transforming the way networks are built, deployed, and managed. IDC estimates that investments in cloud-managed networking will expand to $10 billion by 2022. Organizations are accelerating adoption of SD-WAN, and the evolution of SD-Branch will bring even greater improvements in user experience, agility and security.
Cloud-based networking is the future.
Cloud Adoption is a Journey
Cloud-based networking delivers the scale and efficiency most organizations are seeking, the reality is that companies are in different stages of their cloud journey. Some organizations are still getting started with SaaS applications like Office 365 and Salesforce.com. Others are farther down the path, having also refactored legacy applications for the cloud using IaaS and/or PaaS offerings.
Conversely, organizations that operate in highly regulated industries like healthcare and banking as well as in government tend to be more cloud-averse. These organizations may need to uphold the very highest data privacy standards or protect mission-critical operations. Laws may dictate that data must be stored within the borders of the country in which it is collected and processed.
Other organizations want to preserve their investment in on-premises management skills, processes and tools. After all, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
Aruba is committed to helping customers protect their existing investments, while simultaneously benefitting from modern cloud-native or cloud-like operations.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce advancements in Aruba Central to support on-premises deployments, as well as new cloud-enabled integrations in AirWave, our multivendor on-premises network management platform. In fact, just as AirWave celebrates 20 years as a product this past August, contact tracing integration will ensure businesses can quickly utilize critical location-based services when its needed.
Advancing Network Management for Today’s New Challenges
We’ve been hard at work introducing enhancements in Aruba Central as our next-generation, microservices-based platform to enable high scale, resiliency and instant access to new services.
Having been available as a cloud service for some time, Aruba Central has just recently been adapted for on-premises environments. This means that customers gain cloud-like benefits while remaining in compliance with legacy corporate or regulatory requirements.
Whether deployed on-premises, in the cloud or as part of a managed services offering, Aruba Central is the single-pane-of-glass management and operations center for the Aruba ESP architecture. Network operators are granted greater visibility into their network, access to powerful analytics and insights, and advanced protections against internal and external threats.
The on-premises version of Aruba Central is now under select availability. To demo or try the product yourself, contact your Aruba account manager or solution provider.
