FUTURE TECHNOLOGY

This potentially exposes the business to security risks , and increases the burden on IT to maintain consistent access layer policies . They must approach the branch network holistically , which will allow them to easily manage the onboarding of new devices , segmentation of traffic and the ability to meet SLA demands across WAN links . This is where IT requires an architecture flexible enough to scale with the pace of business demands today , as well as meet tomorrow ’ s growth opportunities . All this while reducing costs and moving from a capital expense to an operating expenses model .

Intelligent edge Along with the digital workplace , the edge of the network has expanded the game . While enormous sums of money and investment is going into the network , the focus is shifting to the network edge . Merely getting users onto the network is now insufficient to generate returns and vendors are looking at making the edge smarter , faster and more self-driving , explains Osama AlHaj-Issa , Regional Channel Director , Middle East , Turkey , Africa at HPE Aruba .

“ The digital workplace is still our top selling go to market - but the game has expanded , and the game is now on the intelligent edge . All the focus is now on

Inside legacy networking technologies , decision making , data processing and machine learning are all done at the centre of the network . In this digital age with Internet of Things , self-driving cars ,

Aruba Central ’ s Cloud management platform provides a single of pane of glass for wireless , wired and WAN management , enhancing ITs ability to see what is happening in each branch and troubleshoot issues easily . In turn , leveraging Aruba ’ s portfolio of security and analytics solutions provide the context to customise access and bandwidth policies accordingly .

Branch Gateways allow IT to deploy and manage WAN connections , which in addition to wired and wireless management is a third and critical IT responsibility . The Aruba Branch Gateways support multiple WAN connections , software defined rolebased policy enforcement and the ability to easily define best paths for Internet and datacentre destined traffic . Zero Touch Provisioning offers IT the smart city applications , decision making and analytics can no longer be pushed to the centre of the network . If sensors in health care machines and self-driving cars need to wait for command and control instructions , built into the centre of the network , there will be catastrophic failures at the edge of the network .

“ If a connected-car cannot make a decision on the spot , it may be too late to

ability to configure and deploy all access infrastructure within a branch . A simple to deploy mobile application allows any non-technical employees to barcode scan an access point , switch , or SD-Branch Gateway and bring devices up , for reduced deployment timelines .

While the role of the traditional router has reliably served distributed enterprises for decades , many IT organisations are looking for a new solution that takes advantage of today ’ s broadband connection alternatives .

The Aruba Branch Gateway offers organisations an option that supports broadband , MPLS , and LTE WAN connections . From a routing standpoint , this provides IT with greater insight into the traffic flowing in and out of each branch , regardless of the uplink . A Headend Gateway is needed for VPN concentrator termination in hub-and-spoke topologies for IPsec VPN tunnels , and in datacentre and campus routing scenarios .

Multiple levels of IT administrator privileges help distribute the workload for environments that can span multiple time zones or responsibilities within IT . It is easy to set up who can see and make changes to the hardware in each branch , or assign read-only privileges to those

26 Issue 17 INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS