Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today introducedAruba ESP(Edge Services Platform), the industry’s firstAI-powered, cloud-nativeplatformthat predicts and resolves problems at the network edge before they happen.Built on AIOps, Zero Trust network security, and aUnified Infrastructure for campus, data center, branch and remote workerlocations, Aruba ESP delivers an automated, all-in-one platform that continuously analyzes data across domains, ensures SLAs, identifies anomalies and self-optimizes, while seeing and securing unknown devices on the network. Aruba ESP is designed to deliver a cloud experience at the edge and can be consumed either as a service in the cloud or on-premises, as amanaged service delivered through Aruba partners, orvia network as a service through HPE GreenLake. Tailored for varying economic requirements, customersmay also procureit withflexible financing options via HPE Financial Services.
The technology market undergoes a major transition about once every decade. The last two decades were centered on delivering ubiquitous mobility followed by the move to cloud-based applications.We are now entering an era of data analytics driven by IoT, AI and automation supported by computeand modern networking to power a new breed of applications and workloads that work in concert with the cloud but that operate at the edge. As a result, enterprises are generating massive amounts of unstructured data at the edge which, if analyzed and acted upon properly, can be used to improve efficiencies, enhance experiences and enable new business outcomes. The key to turning these real-time insights into meaningful actions is to analyze and process this data at the point of origin – the edge – where people, devices and things connect to the digital world.This ability to generate actionable insights based on data is especially pertinent today during this unprecedented time in history where businesses, employees and, subsequently, the corporate network must adapt to rapidly evolving business and workplace needs.
Utilizing unstructured data at the edgerequires a network that leverages AI via network telemetry to process that data at a rate and volume beyond what’s possible at human scale.Italso requiresan infrastructure with an AI-powered “sixth sense” that proactively identifies impending issues, recommendsan accurate resolution and leverages automation to turn that into logical actions,all without manual intervention.Through continued analysis ofnetwork, user, and device insights, Aruba ESPturnsinformation into knowledge, helping organizations accelerate transformation and maintain business continuityvia a single, cloud-nativeplatform that can reside either on-premises or in the cloud, andsecures and unifies the infrastructure across the enterprise built on the following core principles:
• AIOpsis thecritical componentofAruba ESP, which uses AI and analytics to identify exact root causes with greater than 95% accuracy, auto-remediate network issues, proactively monitor the user experience, tune the network to prevent problems before they occur, and use peer benchmarking and prescriptive recommendations to continuously optimize and secure the network. In a live customer deployment, using AIOps resulted in a 15% increase in throughput capacity and reduced issue resolution time by nearly 90%, ultimately resulting in a vastly improved end user and IT experience.
• Unified Infrastructureconsolidates all network operations for switching, Wi-Fi and SD-WAN across campus, data center,branch,and remote worker environments under Aruba Central, a cloud-native,single-pane-of-glass consolethatcorrelates cross-domain events to reduce issue resolution time and manual errors.In addition, Aruba’s unified infrastructure approach provides customers with a choice between controller services on-premises or in the cloud, delivering maximum flexibility at enterprise scale.
• Zero Trust Network Security combines built-in role-based access technology, Dynamic Segmentation and identity-based intrusion detection to authenticate, authorize and control every user and device connecting to the network, while still detecting, preventing, isolating and stopping attacks before they impact the business.
“The Intelligent Edge is the catalyst that will spark limitless possibilities for organizations and enterprises that want to accelerate transformation and ensure business continuity by leveraging their technology investments as their greatest asset,” said Keerti Melkote, president of Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Built upon Aruba’s guiding principles of connect, protect, analyze, and act, Aruba ESP is the culmination of years of innovation, R&D, Aruba ingenuity and, most importantly, input from our valued customers whose honest feedback and insightful perspective has helped to make this platform a network that knows.”
New Innovations Within Aruba ESP
Aruba ESP is the industry’s most scalable, full-stack, cloud-native platform for wired, wireless andSD-WAN environments that unifies multiple network elements for centralized management and control. Aruba ESP is based on open standardsandenablesintegration with a variety of third-party solutions and services.Significant innovations introduced today include:
• Cloud-native management forany size enterprise –Aruba Centralcurrently runs mission critical networks for over 65,000 customers and now with new ArubaOS services, it is the industry’s onlycontrollerless, cloud-based platformto provide full-stack management and operations for wired, wireless and SD-WAN infrastructure of any size across campus, data center, branch, and remote worker locationsto be consumed on-premises or in the cloud.
• Simplified daily operations with unified infrastructure – With access to a common data lake via Aruba ESP, the latest version of Aruba Central has been enhanced with simplified navigation, advanced search, and contextual viewsto present multiple dimensions of information througha single point-of-control, virtually eliminatingthe need for disparate tools to collect and correlate information across numerous domains and locations.
• Reducedresolution time with AI and automation– Aruba has a proven track record of bringing AI-powered innovations to market, including unique technologies like Aruba AirMatch. Based on modeling data from over one million network devicesgenerating over 1.5B data points per day, Aruba’s new AI Insights reduces troubleshooting time by identifying hard-to-see network configuration issues and providing root-cause, prescriptive recommendations and automated remediation to continuously optimize network operations.
• AI-powered IT Efficiencies—Aruba Central now offers AI Search, a Natural Language Processing data discovery service that enables IT teams to eliminate “swivel chair” investigations by using simple, English language queries to extract comprehensive user and device information from Aruba ESP’s common data lake to present relevant information in context to quickly resolve a problem. For more complex issues, AI Assist uses event-driven automation to collect and post all the relevant data for both the internal help desk and Aruba Technical Assistance Center (TAC).
• Granular visibility across applications, devices and the network – Enhancements to Aruba Central enable user-centric analytics from User Experience Insight to identify client, application, and network performance issues faster.
• Extension ofnext-gen switching to distributed and mid-size enterprises – To help organizations accelerate Edge transformation, Aruba has expanded its CX Switch portfolio to include the Aruba CX 6200 Switch Series. This new series brings built-in analytics and automation capabilities to every network edge where user and device connectivity occurs, generating insights that can be applied to informing better business outcomes. The CX 6200 switch series further expands Aruba’s end-to-end CX switching portfolio, enabling customers to run a single operating model from the enterprisecampus and branch access layer to the data center.
• Ongoing innovation with new Developer Hub – Aruba is introducing the Developer Hub, a comprehensive resource for developers that includes Aruba APIs and documentation to streamline the development of innovative, next-generation edgeapplications leveraging the open Aruba ESPplatform.
“Our large-scale network spans multiple campuses and learning centers that run performance-stringent applications to keep our students, academics and researchers connected and productive,” said Ron Gardner, senior infrastructure engineer at James Cook University. “We have chosen to take a cloud-first approach to operating our infrastructure and the enhancements to Aruba Central and ArubaOS give us the visibility and insight to simplify operations while reducing our equipment footprint and securely manage our large campuses and distributed locations from the cloud, ultimately allowing us to proactively identify and address issues before they disrupt operations.”
To address the varying business and technical requirements of organizations looking to harness the power of the Intelligent Edge, Aruba has expanded its consumption and procurement options. These includenetworkas a service through HPE GreenLakeor customers can procure Aruba ESP with flexible financing options via HPE Financial Services. For example, customers can acquire the technology they need today and pay only 1% of the total contract value each month for the first eight months, deferring over 90% of the cost until 2021.
“With the size of our infrastructure and massive volume of data being generated at the edge, we needed a way to identify, fix and fine-tune the network automatically,” said Brandon Stratton, ES network administrator of Information Technology at the University of Houston. “Aruba’s expertise and approach with AI-based solutions, like NetInsight, represents a pragmatic path for us to analyze and then act on the insights we capture.”
Tune into ATM Digitalbeginning June 9th tosee Aruba ESP in action, hear from industry luminaries and experts,and learn about the latest advancements in networking. Register here to attend.
Additional Resources
• Blog:Unlock the Power of Intelligent Edge with Aruba ESP
• Video: Introducing Aruba ESP