Why Aruba Wireless is Dominating the Market
Regardless of size, scale or sector, it’s a wireless world. Healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and commercial entities—all with dispersed physical boundaries—are routinely tasked with providing instantaneous network access for any device, anywhere, anytime—all while keeping their networks tightly secure, the data private, and transfer speeds rapid. It’s a tall order but also ho-hum – everyone expects it. This is the way we do business today.
Aruba, sets itself apart by providing the most complete and well-rounded portfolio of products. In 2018, Gartner ranked Aruba ahead of Cisco Systems in its Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure ranking for the second year in a row.
Why is Aruba wireless dominating the market? Is it THAT good? In 2016, Aruba was just beginning its climb into Gartner’s rankings. Why did Aruba take the market by storm so quickly? Should you be taking a closer look at how its products might successfully integrate into your IT environment?
An Innovation Platform
If you think about it, there has been very little innovation in a very long time in the networking space. The market is concentrated with just a few vendors. Then along came Aruba, an innovation powerhouse, with new, fresh ideas to handle the volumes, reliability, security, scalability, ease of management, and great support.
Customers love Aruba wireless as the best, most cost-effective wireless solution. Then they are delighted to realize that it is also a platform, the foundation for multiple levels of security including secure access for guests and IoT devices, wayfinding, location-based notifications, app consolidation, and asset tracking.
Customers First
Aruba wireless really is that good. Lissa Hollinger, Aruba’s vice president of portfolio marketing, said that “one of Aruba’s guiding principles is ‘customer first, customer last.” Aruba is, at its core, a customer-centered culture through and through. All product development is focused on solving customer problems. Topped off with a lifetime warranty and free 24/7 support for many products. Devoted Aruba users are proud to be “AirHeads”.
Integrated Security with 360 Secure Fabric
With IoT, cloud, and BYOD, today’s IT networks are like swiss cheese, with end users popping in and out constantly. A bulletproof firewall protecting the perimeter is insufficient. This is a paradigm shift in how we handle network security. Integration is key. Like an enormous, snuggly blanket, Aruba’s 360 Secure Fabric protects across all points in any environment. How does it accomplish this? It is comprised of two signature components:
- Aruba IntroSpect User and Entity Behavioral Analysis (UEBA) provides visibility, monitoring, and attack detection.
- Aruba ClearPass handles authentication through its network access control (NAC) and policy management solution and syncs up with UEBA to automate threat responses. Aruba ClearPass even works with Cisco.
Integrated Network Management with Aruba Airwave
Airwave offers integrated IT operations management tools ideal for multi-vendor environments. Its unified network management handles both wired and wireless networks, with step-by-step workflows and streamlined automation capabilities. With detailed health and analytics dashboards, Aruba Airwave offers real-time monitoring and control.
Strong, Secure, Scalable Guest Access Control
Guest access is an important requirement of any wireless infrastructure. Aruba ClearPass’ Guest combines automated registration (no more manual entry) and enterprise-grade security to give visitors—customers, contractors —secure access to wired and wireless networks. Not only that, ClearPass detects anomalies and deals with them automatically if possible, creating alerts and making you aware of any possible breaches. This feature alone will allow you to avoid a multi-month undetected breach by a guest. Go ahead and expand your user experience—without the risk.
IoT Security
Internet connected devices are projected to reach 28 billion by 2020. That’s a lot of devices! ClearPass is integral to IoT security, whether industrial, retail or biomedical. All connected devices and sensors can be and are entry points for breaches. Aruba’s four categories of defense combine to ensure maximum protection.
- Visibility is created with orchestrated discovery.
- Access privileges must conform to context-based rules.
- Enforcement is enterprise-wide across wired, wi-fi, and VPN.
- Automated end-to-end workflows ensure situationally-aware security.
Wayfinding & Asset Tracking
Aruba wayfinding includes the foundation to build location-based services on top of the network infrastructure. With beacons and Aruba Meridian, a cloud-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution featuring wayfinding, proximity-based notifications, and digital asset tracking, you can provide game-changing services. This flexible platform’s tools can be customized to offer all kinds of new services for university campuses, stadiums, airports, warehouses and retail stores. Being able to track assets such as shipments, medical equipment, and lift trucks saves time and money while increasing productivity. Use your imagination for how these capabilities will benefit your business.
Breadth and Functionality
Since Aruba is owned by HPE, you’re not just getting its full range of IT solutions. Over the years, HPE has amassed a broad stable of high-quality (and lower priced) networking hardware including WLAN, routers, and switches. The HPE AllianceOne Partner Program, developed in 2010, allows HPE to bundle its hardware with vendor products, offering its customers a complete, end-to-end package. For customers, that means one stop shopping at its best, where you can rest assured you are getting industry leading design.
The list of solutions and options could go on. These are only the first of dozens of reasons why Aruba Wireless is leading the industry in end-to-end wired and wireless management and security. To dive deeper and discuss your particular needs, get in touch with Comport today.
Author: Bill Flatley, Field CTO for Healthcare
Bill is responsible for technical strategies and recommendations for Comport’s Healthcare clients. His extensive experience includes four healthcare systems in leadership roles supporting Clinical Applications, Digital Health, and Office of the CIO as the primary liaison between IT and the business.
