Aruba Networks announces cloud-based approach
Enterprise network solutions provider Aruba Networks recently introduced its Virtual Branch Networking (VBN) 2.0 solution, which leverages cloud computing to provide users with greater access to secure enterprise data at lower costs.
Traditionally, enterprises with multiple sites have replicated their headquarters’ data-storage solution in branch offices, which has required significant capital and operating costs for the various devices that replicate the same functions, said Mike Tennefoss, head of strategic marketing for Aruba.
“We’ve integrated and transferred a lot of the services that were done in that branch in a box into the cloud. We see this as a natural migration path toward cost reduction,” Tennefoss said.
Aruba is able to enhance performance and lower costs by delivering content from an enterprise’s data center once to myriad content-delivery network centers — operated by Aruba’s third-party partners, not the enterprise customer — located throughout the world, allowing the information to be transmitted locally to user, Tennefoss said.
“That does two things,” he said. “Number one, it gives me immediate access with very low latency to the data and application, because it’s coming from a local site instead of the corporate headquarters in, say, Paris. Number two, it reduces the amount of wide-area-network traffic going to my corporate data center, because my corporate data center only sends it once; thereafter, it’s served from the content delivery data centers located around the world.
“So, I get low latency, and I preserve my wide-area-network bandwidth by doing this.”
In addition, Aruba offers various tiers of content security service from third-party partners that allow enterprises to establish policies designed to prevent hackers from infiltrating a data network and to ensure that valuable data — for instance, financial records or patent research — is not sent outside the network.
“From the company’s point of view, this is lowering my expenses, because I don’t need to put an expensive box in each branch office,” Tennefoss said. “It’s lowering the utilization cost of the wide-area network, since I only need to send it once instead of hundreds and hundreds of times. And, it’s providing full security end-to-end, because the contents in the CDN are stored encrypted and are not decrypted until they are delivered to the remote site.”
While the solution leverages several best-in-class partners, enterprises subscribing to VBN 2.0 will only need to deal with Aruba if problems arise or changes need to be made, Tennefoss said.
“You could set up these services on your own by going to several different vendors and stitching something together … but it would be very complex, time consuming and expensive,” he said. “With VBN 2.0, there’s a single source of responsibility.”
Currently in beta, VBN 2.0 will be released later this month, Tennefoss said.
