Aruba: New working modes bring huge challenges that traditional network infrastructure cannot cope with

Recently, with the improvement of this round of epidemic, some areas in China affected by the epidemic have begun to gradually lift the blockade, and orderly promote the resumption of work and production on the basis of dynamic zeroing. Under the huge uncertainty factors brought by the epidemic, hybrid office or "work anytime, anywhere" has become today's new working model, which has also changed employee expectations and employers' employment policies. In the post-epidemic era, the home office model will also be more and more popular in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the Global Workforce Index (KGWI) survey conducted by human resources service company Kelly Services, the proportion of respondents working from home in the Asia-Pacific region (37%) is much higher than that in the Americas (24%) and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (23%). Although the popularity of remote work in China is not high, it has great room for development. In addition, Chinese employees have shown a high degree of acceptance and recognition of remote work. The survey shows that 82% of Chinese employees believe that remote work can enable them to complete their work tasks as well as in the office , and 79% of Chinese employees believe that hybrid work has improved their work quality.

While the concept of "flexible work" is becoming more and more deeply rooted, the limitations of enterprise IT and traditional enterprise network infrastructure are emerging. In a research survey , more than half of the respondents said that working from home lacks workplace necessities, such as a stable Internet connection. In the new normal, employees expect employers to provide a better remote working environment, especially technical support. At the same time, companies also need to connect employees scattered around the world in a new way and ensure secure and seamless network connections.

The hidden pressure that business emergency plans bring to IT teams

In fact, according to relevant survey reports, when the emergence of the new crown epidemic forced most people around the world to adopt a remote work mode, corporate IT personnel experienced the greatest increase in work pressure and were more likely to feel burnout than any other position.

This is due to the exponential growth of remote work and Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices - from mobile phones to work laptops and tablets, and the need to continuously provide secure connections to cloud and data center hosting services for remote workers and IoT devices, which puts tremendous pressure on network infrastructure and operations teams. Not only that, but there is no room for human error when it comes to IT and security issues.

In addition, as global business operations attempt to restore pre-pandemic models, corporate IT teams will once again be under pressure. In recent years, China has introduced a series of policy measures to develop flexible employment and strengthen flexible employment services, proposing to support the development of new employment forms and create conditions for workers to work from home, work remotely from home, and work part-time. This brings new challenges to IT teams. Now they will have to balance the project plan of returning to the office while dealing with the access rights of remote workers. Traditional network management tools are no longer sufficient to support these teams. They not only bring complex manual processes, but also increase the risk of errors, performance issues or downtime.

Network infrastructure is the key cornerstone for digitalization and the foundation for application implementation. It can almost be said to be the first domino in the digitalization process. If the network encounters any crash or downtime, a series of failures will occur. Business-critical applications will stop working, internal company meetings and webinars will need to be rescheduled, and employees' normal access to company servers may be affected, which will inevitably seriously affect the company's business.

However, with the support of emerging technologies, the situation has changed. IT teams no longer need to be busy dealing with various daily IT operation and maintenance management operations.

Network infrastructure is no longer a domino, but a rock of digitalization

Just as we’ve embraced new technologies to enable working from home, the network solutions we rely on need similar updates. Today, advanced network solutions, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), can help businesses and their IT teams meet these challenges. In fact, IDC predicts that by 2023, 75% of IT companies will use artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) to help IT staff.

Big data and machine learning algorithms can enhance and automate daily IT tasks, from performance monitoring and reporting to data correlation and analysis. It is predicted that by 2025, the world will generate 463 EB of data. To put it in perspective, if 1GB of data is the size of the earth, then 1EB of data is the size of the sun. Using artificial intelligence solutions will enable IT teams to quickly analyze and process massive amounts of data to gain meaningful and actionable insights. In addition, artificial intelligence solutions can also help IT teams proactively predict and solve problems that have not yet been detected.

In addition to the demand for AIOps, flexible consumption models are also becoming more and more popular, such as Network as a Service (NaaS). Aruba's recently released "The Rise of the Flexible Network" report collected feedback from more than 1,500 IT managers in the Asia-Pacific region, of which 93% of enterprise IT personnel said they would be exposed to the concept of NaaS in their daily work. By combining the capabilities of different solutions, IT teams can be freed from daily boring network problems and be authorized to innovate and protect assets.

When businesses build network optimization and resiliency strategies, they will gain greater operational efficiency and security. In fact, 75% of global IT leaders said they expect to apply AI operations to help their IT staff by the end of 2023. In addition to AI operations (AIOps), a study by Aruba found that more than three-quarters (77%) of Asia Pacific companies said that having the flexibility to scale the network according to business needs was key to their interest in NaaS. As companies continue to seek new ways to improve productivity, "as a service" models like NaaS represent IT teams keeping up with innovation and helping them reduce the pressure of network operations management. With these comprehensive capabilities to advance network solutions, network infrastructure no longer plays the role of the first domino, but becomes a rock that resists external pressures and supports digital initiatives.

Remotely located, digitally connected

Digital connectivity is available even in different locations

Secure and powerful networks will continue to be the cornerstone for ensuring that employees can connect anywhere and at any time. Today, China has entered the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, and has proposed the informatization goal of "building a widely intelligent digital infrastructure system" from a policy level, further enhancing network supply and service capabilities, and providing faster, higher quality, more reliable, broader and smarter information connections. At the same time, companies are also giving priority to investing in their network infrastructure. Faced with the mobility brought by hybrid and remote working and employee preferences, companies must upgrade their network infrastructure to ensure that employees can maintain secure digital connections at all times, whether they are working remotely or back in the office.

About Aruba  

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a global leader in secure, intelligent edge-to-cloud networking solutions that use AI to automate networks and leverage data to drive business outcomes. Aruba takes a cloud-native approach through Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) and as-a-service options to help customers meet the connectivity, security and financial needs of campus, branch, data center and remote office environments, including all aspects of wired and wireless LAN and wide area networks (WAN).

For more information, visit Aruba's website at www.arubanetworks.com. To receive the latest news in real time, follow Aruba on WeChat and WeChat . To participate in the latest technical discussions about mobility and Aruba products, visit the Airheads community at community.arubanetworks.com .