Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) company, offers an industry-leading home/small office solution designed for hybrid work environments that enables remote workers to securely access all traditional services via a single Wi-Fi access point (AP). announced the new EdgeConnect Microbranch. With this solution, which does not require a gateway, network agent or any hardware to work remotely, IT departments can provide employees with a consistent experience regardless of location. EdgeConnect Microbranch can offer all on-campus connectivity services to remote workers. Thus, the troubleshooting process is accelerated, Zero Trust based network architecture and Secure Access Service Endpoint (SASE) security structures are extended to home/small offices, providing uninterrupted corporate protection.
SD-WAN has been added to larger branches and campuses to meet ever-increasing demands for application performance, reliability, and security. Today, where hybrid workspace is the norm, home/small offices need the automated, policy-based traffic management and cloud-based SASE security of Aruba SD-WAN. Thus, a more efficient, powerful and secure connection is offered to the increasingly remote workforce. As a matter of fact, according to the estimates of International Data Corporation (IDC), 70 percent of G2000 companies will switch to remote or hybrid working model and business processes will be redefined. [one]
For companies that want to implement flexible and remote working, the path to success is to give their hybrid employees access to tools, applications and functionality just like they are in the office. The new EdgeConnect Microbranch solution does this by adding new SD-WAN and SASE services to the connectivity, identity-based access control, management and analytics capabilities users have had in the past with Aruba RAPs. Moreover, it can do this without the need for additional hardware or a network agent on devices within the company. Considering that IT teams cannot be located in temporary locations where they have limited space such as home offices, small offices and mobile retail stores, kiosks and mobile clinics, the lack of need for additional hardware is an important factor.
EdgeConnect Microbranch services solve common problems associated with remote work, such as tackling high-density devices that eat up broadband that may be on the network, and offering performance guarantees to latency-sensitive applications, as in ‘unified communications and collaboration’ providing decent security. Policy-based routing in new EdgeConnect Microbranch services enables IT teams to optimize the destination of application traffic while integrating existing services such as Air Slice, which dynamically allocates access point radio resources to specific applications. For example, traffic in video conference calls is prioritized over arbitrary videos, and the quality of these calls can be improved. The traffic in the videoconferencing call is then routed directly to a trusted SaaS provider, which avoids unnecessary visits to the data center for control purposes.
Larry Lunetta, vice president of portfolio marketing solutions at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, said: “EdgeConnect Microbranch offers a modern and scalable approach to companies in a remote work order, making the home office experience equivalent to the office. Although some are home office access points or routers. “Even though it thinks that the only network service that can be extended to your network is security (in which case you need extra hardware), with the cloud-based approach, EdgeConnect Microbranch can extend all critical network services to the home office through just one access point.”
Bringing the already powerful structure of remote access points to homes thanks to the key features of SD-WAN, EdgeConnect Microbranch is now an ideal solution for hybrid operations where uptime and security are critical, such as call centers, remote healthcare and IT management.
EdgeConnect Microbranch is an industry-leading solution to deliver SD-WAN and SASE services to small/home offices, making necessary changes to familiar approaches that require extensive hardware such as strong manageability and functionality, far from single-purpose appliances and consumer grade hardware.
Features and Benefits of New SD-WAN No On-Premises Gateway
- Policy-based routing: Allows IT teams to deliver automated rules-based application performance and security that meet service level agreements (SLAs) designed for specific applications, websites, or user types.
- Tunnel and network route management: Optimizes network performance by managing VPN tunnels on demand and automatically rerouting traffic to the best performing network path.
- SASE integration: Provides secure connectivity to cloud security services such as Zscaler via direct access point, and Aruba Central, which provides unified configuration management.
- Improved WAN visibility: Accelerates troubleshooting and improves user experience by detecting latency, drift, and other connectivity issues affecting the ISP that are traditionally hidden from IT teams, making near real-time updates affecting WAN availability, usage, and throughput.
The existing competencies in Aruba’s remote access solutions, which are at the base of these features, are as follows:
- Traffic prioritization: Allocates radio resources to an application and dynamically changes these tasks when application sessions start or end.
- Extensive scalability: Zero touch deployment and unified management are supported for tens of thousands of remote workers through Aruba Central’s cloud-based services and AOS 10.
- Improved uptime and reliability: Provides LTE backup via USB interface in case the home or small office loses its ISP connection.
650 Group’s technology analyst Chris DePuy said: “As remote work becomes more and more common, IT departments are facing increasing challenges for their employees, such as providing visibility, easy management, and high security for business-critical applications and data, regardless of location. “Being able to extend Zero Trust and SASE security structures to both home offices and remote work points will play an important role for organizations to take a step forward in hybrid work order.”
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The Aruba EdgeConnect Microbrach solution is available in early access and will be generally available in March 2022 for all APs running ArubaOS 10 with a Foundation AP license (including qualifying APs customers already own and manage in Aruba Central). AP pricing varies by model.
[1]IDC, IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Work Predictions, November 2021
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