At the Aruba APAC Atmosphere 2016 conference held late last month in Singapore, Aruba Networks President Dominic Orr announced the launch of network-as-a-service, which supports the delivery of the company's new Mobile First Platform.
Core applications for Gen-Mobile era
The core applications on Aruba Networks' new Mobile First Platform are supported by its existing network infrastructure, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low energy (BLE), wired and WAN. The platform comprises network controls, network management, policy management, cloud networking, network analytics and location services. These applications supports the delivery of third-party IT services and business applications that form a mobile apps ecosystem.
Examples of the IT services that are available on Aruba's Mobile First Platform include Citrix, MobileIron (MDM and enterprise mobility services), splunk (operational intelligence), ArcSight (an HP company that provides cyber security), Okta (identity management and single sign-on), Check Point, Intel Security, Juniper, and Palo Alto Networks.
As for business applications, the Platform also supports Skype for Business, AT&T, Aislelabs (enterprise mobile wallet marketing platform), kasada (cryptographic data firewall and our password-less authentication), RetailNext (in-store analytics), Envoy (visitor registration) and eventboard (visitor and room management).
"The Gen-mobile has given rise to rapid IT forces like the internet of things (IoT) and mobility. This is not just about the use of next-generation devices, like the Wi-Fi-connected TV boxes like the Apple TV, but the applications on top," said Anthony Wai, sales engineering director of Asia Pacific, Aruba Networks (a HPE company), in an exclusive interview with Computerworld Hong Kong.
In a typical workplace environment, an organization needs to refresh the network infrastructure once every three to seven years. For example, they would need new routers and new switches to conform to new standards of the wireless network. In the past, when IT procurement was largely driven by IT, addressing user experience tended to be an afterthought. The situation today is reversed, however. "Many of the IT procurement decisions today are now user-driven. For example, the line of businesses (LoB) would first provide to their banking customers a banking application. They would then instruct IT to handle the infrastructure matters," Wai said.
Utility-like network procurement models
To catch up with the fast pace of new mobile apps development and delivery, and the increasingly shortened cycle of network infrastructure upgrades, IT and the other LoBs would benefit from a flexible network services procurement model, such as network-as-a-service (NaaS), said Wai.
"NaaS enables the subscription of network infrastructure services using an opex model instead of a capex model. By subscribing instead of acquiring these network services, customers can benefit from the latest technologies, and need not budget a sum of capex to invest in the next round of network technology upgrades," Wai said.
At the Conference, Aruba announced the launch of three procurement models: 1) Network-as-a-Service; 2) Service Provider Managed Service; and 3) Management-as-a-Service.
The first procurement model is Network-as-a-Service (NaaS). Aruba has formed partnerships with HPE Financial Services and HPE Technical Services, as well as Deloitte and Accenture, which will all be extended to Hong Kong, pending the finalized finance model, said Wai. From these partners, Hong Kong customers can subscribe for network services on demand, such as controllers, virtualized mobility controllers. In turn, Aruba will provide services like consulting and designing of a mature Wi-Fi or WLAN network, together with billing and deployment services.
The next procurement model is Service Provider Managed Service. To deliver Service Provider Managed Service in Hong Kong, Aruba has partnered with HKT and "many internet service providers" whose names were kept undisclosed. The Service is targeted at small and medium businesses (SMBs) with a smaller scale Wi-Fi deployment. This applies, for example, to a shop owner that runs a store in a mall and wishes to provide Wi-Fi service, but does not wish to purchase an access point, or does not have the IT expertise to handle it. "In this scenario, the shop owner can subscribe from a network partner, such as HKT, for Aruba's managed Wi-Fi service.
The network partner would then install the access point and cables in the store, and have Aruba manage the Wi-Fi service, including the publication of the SSID, and management of the bandwidth and users.
The last procurement model is Management as a Service. It is hosted by Aruba itself in a cloud environment, and is supported by a number of Aruba data centers worldwide. This model is the most suitable in a distributed work environment, such as chain restaurants like McDonald's and KFC. This is because chain restaurants usually operate in numerous branches but without putting in place onsite IT expertise.
"Upon order confirmation, Aruba can ship the required number of access point(s) to the physical store. All that is required of the store owner is to plug in the access point(s) and the network cable. The administrator user can perform guest management, guest filtering on web access, all via Aruba Central on its Wi-Fi network," said Wai. And since this service is hosted on Aruba's cloud, the administrator user need not bother with upgrading the technologies subscribed for the next two to three years.
Wai added that users can adopt a mix of the above network services procurement models to cater to their individual business needs. "For example, an organization can deploy NaaS at its headquarter officer, and adopt Management as a Service at its branch offices or sites," Wai said.