HPE Unveils ‘Breakthrough’ AI Powered Aruba Central Platform
The new Aruba Central capabilities for the first time allows partners to proactively optimize an SD-WAN rollout based on the AI based analytics from Aruba Central.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Tuesday unveiled a new version of its Aruba Central network management platform outfitted with artificial intelligence-based analytics.
“This is a breakthrough with artificial intelligence-based analytics being integrated into Aruba Central for the first time,” said Hewlett Packard Enterprise Vice President Dr. Tom Bradicich, HPE Fellow and global head of IoT and Edge Center of Excellence and Labs. “The impact this is going to have on customers is tremendous because these analytics are no longer on a separate tool, program or screen.”
The new Aruba Central capabilities for the first time allows partners to proactively optimize an SD-WAN rollout based on the AI based analytics from Aruba Central.
[RELATED: Keerti Melkote On How HPE Aruba Differs From Dell, Cisco]
Aruba Central now includes branch management capabilities with a new SD-WAN Orchestrator that makes it easier for partners to deploy what HPE calls a “large scale edge infrastructure connecting thousands of branch locations with multiple data centers.”
It also includes for the first time Aruba Virtual Gateways for AWS and Azure which allows partners to extend network and security policies to workloads running in the public cloud.
Last but not least, new SaaS prioritization feature boosts the performance of SaaS applications with support for Salesforce.com and Office 365.
With path optimization, Aruba Central is able to do a network traffic analysis and automatically reroute for path Optimization. “Aruba Central is taking path optimization to the next level to provide significant performance enhancements,” said Bradicich
The advanced AI powered capability that is now integrated into Aruba Central is based on Aruba NetInsight which came with Aruba’s acquisition of Cape Networks last year.
Ultimately, the new version of Aruba Central is going to power big gains in internet of things/edge computing deployments, said Bradicich.” To have perpetual connectivity, you need smart analytics and expansive deployment capabilities like those that are being provided by Aruba Central,” he said. “This is a very great opportunity for partners to generate revenue.
The call to action for partners is to drive networking sales through the advanced AI based analytics capabilities with the launch of Aruba Central.
“Because the manageability of the network is now integrated with artificial intelligence analytics, we can now run the analytics during a network deployment to uncover an anomaly or hostile event during the actual network deployment,” said Bradicich. “This lowers deployment inhibitions and increases time to value,”
HPE said the initial enhancements will be offered as part of Aruba Central 2.5 which will be available starting in July.
Paul Cohen, vice president of sales for New York-based PKA Technologies Inc., said adding artificial intelligence and machine learning to Aruba Central will provide big benefits for customers.
“Artificial intelligence isn’t the future- it is now!” exclaimed Cohen. “This allows us to compete more aggressively in the marketplace with AI and analytics capabilities that weren’t there before. Customers are blown away by this kind of AI technology.”
The AI capabilities provide an additional sales spark to a business that is already growing at robust clip, said Cohen. “We are doing very well with Aruba,” he said.
HPE also continued its drive to capitalize on the convergence of industrial operational technology (OT) with the integration of smart sensor technology from multinational OT technology provider ABB into Aruba access points. That innovation – which will be available at the end of this year - opens the door for Aruba to be used in OT environments for motors, pumps and machines.
In addition, ABB, HPE, Microsoft and German OT company Rittal have partnered to provide what they are calling the “industry’s first enterprise grade edge appliance for Microsoft Azure Stack. That appliance powers real time intelligence in harsh industrial environments.