Aruba Launches New EdgeConnect Microbranch Solution to Power a Modern Hybrid Workplace Experience

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced the launch of the new EdgeConnect Microbranch solution, an industry-leading networking solution for home and small offices in hybrid office environments that allows remote workers to securely access all traditional office services in the office through a single Wi-Fi access point (AP) without the need to deploy gateways, agents or additional hardware at remote sites. EdgeConnect Microbranch provides comprehensive edge-to-cloud connectivity services to remote workers, the ability to accelerate troubleshooting, and ensures corporate security measures by seamlessly extending the zero-trust campus network and secure access service edge (SASE) security framework to home/small offices, so that employees can get the same experience no matter where they are.

EdgeConnect Microbranch is part of Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), which consists of an AP and new SD-WAN services. Aruba has always provided strong connectivity, security and zero-touch login experience to home offices through its popular remote access points (RAPs), and EdgeConnect Microbranch also adheres to this concept.

SD-WAN has been added to large branch and campus networks to meet the growing demand for improved application performance, reliability and security. Today, as hybrid working becomes the norm, home and small remote offices need Aruba SD-WAN's automated orchestration, policy-based traffic management, and cloud-based SASE security to efficiently, robustly and securely support an increasing number of remote employees. In fact, IDC estimates that 70% of G2000 organizations will adopt a remote or hybrid-first work model and redefine workflows.

For organizations, the key to successfully implementing flexible remote work is to enable hybrid workers to access the same tools, applications and functions as in the office, even at home. To this end, the new EdgeConnect Microbranch solution not only provides the high-performance connectivity, identity-based access control, management and analysis capabilities of Aruba RAP, but also adds new SD-WAN and SASE without the need for additional hardware at the remote end or agents in the device. For home offices with limited space, small offices and temporary locations without IT staff on duty, such as fast food restaurants, kiosks and mobile clinics, not having to purchase additional hardware is an important factor.

EdgeConnect Microbranch services address common challenges associated with remote work, such as the need to guarantee performance for latency-sensitive applications, such as unified communications and collaboration applications, while ensuring appropriate security and coping with the potential for a higher density of bandwidth-hungry devices on the network. New EdgeConnect Microbranch services, such as policy-based routing, enable IT to optimize how application traffic reaches its destination, complementing existing service optimization capabilities such as Air Slices that dynamically allocate AP radio resources to specific applications. For example, the quality of a video conferencing call can be improved by prioritizing that traffic over video entertainment and then routing video conferencing traffic directly to a trusted SaaS provider and bypassing unnecessary data center inspections.

“EdgeConnect Microbranch provides a modern, scalable way for organizations to enable remote work and provide the same home office experience as in the office,” said Larry Lunetta, vice president of marketing, Aruba Solutions, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE). “While some may argue that security is the only network service that can be extended to a home office AP or router, which would require additional equipment, EdgeConnect Microbranch demonstrates that with a cloud-based approach, all critical network services can be extended to the home office through the access point.”

By extending key SD-WAN capabilities to the already powerful Aruba RAP, EdgeConnect Microbranch is now an ideal solution for hybrid operations environments such as remote call centers, telemedicine and IT management, where availability and security are critical.

Traditional hybrid office network solutions require the deployment of a large amount of hardware in small offices and home offices to provide SD-WAN and SASE services, and also require the deployment of some consumer-grade hardware and single-purpose devices that lack strong management capabilities and functions. As an industry-leading solution, EdgeConnect Microbranch has greatly improved traditional solutions.

New SD-WAN features and benefits: No local gateway required

First, policy-based routing - allows IT departments to ensure application performance and security based on automated rules to meet service level agreements (SLAs) for specific applications, websites or user types;

Tunnel and route orchestration – optimizes network performance by orchestrating virtual private network tunnels on demand and automatically rerouting traffic to the network path that provides the best performance;

Third, SASE integration – secure connections are established directly with cloud security services (such as Zscaler) through the AP, and tunnel orchestration and unified configuration management are provided through Aruba Central;

Fourth, enhanced WAN visibility – provides near real-time updates on WAN availability, utilization and throughput, thereby speeding up troubleshooting and improving the user experience by detecting latency, jitter and other connectivity issues affecting ISPs that were previously invisible to IT teams.

These capabilities build on the capabilities of Aruba's existing remote access solutions, including:

First, traffic prioritization - allocating radio resources to an application and dynamically changing resource allocation when an application session starts or ends;

Second, full scalability – supporting zero-touch deployment and integrated management of tens of thousands of remote workers through Aruba Central cloud-based services and AOS 10;

Third, higher availability and reliability – if the ISP connection to a home or small office is lost, a 4G LTE link backup can be provided via the USB interface.

“As the need for remote work continues to increase, IT departments are facing increasing challenges such as ensuring that all workers have visible, manageable and highly secure access to critical business applications and data regardless of location,” said Chris DePuy, technology analyst at IT market research firm 650 Group. “The ability to extend the Zero Trust and SASE security framework to home and remote offices will play an important role in helping enterprises advance their hybrid work initiatives.”

Availability

The Aruba EdgeConnect Microbranch solution is now available in early access and will be generally available in March 2022 to all APs running ArubaOS 10 with a Base AP license (including eligible APs that customers already own and manage in Central).