Home and office solutions for new remote work trends that safeguard data from security threats without disrupting productivity (Sabong News)

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, businesses all around the world abruptly closed their doors and sent their staff home. As a result, corporations need to develop a model that works best for them. This usually entails a well-balanced mix of remote and onsite labor. This was a far-fetched idea before the pandemic and business organizations were too hesitant to push through on digitalization and setting up to what we know now as hybrid work solutions. Hybrid work, which combines in-office and remote work, is becoming increasingly popular. For a variety of reasons, hybrid employment is starting to make good commercial sense in a variety of industries. It won’t be long until more organizations follow suit, as several multinational corporations are looking into making this a more permanent feature. Business organizations now require an enterprise-grade 5G fixed wireless connection that can support their daily workflow even while they are away from the office. There are design and solutions that enable employees to stay connected and productive wherever they are, as most firms have adopted the work-from-home model. In addition, IT network architecture and support are being challenged because of the abrupt and considerable move to remote work. Undeniably, work from home is here to stay. This working paradigm has a lot of benefits, and the best way for organizations to get the most out of it is to invest in the right technology that allows their employees to be productive and communicate safely. However, there are some issues that corporate executives should think about as they prepare for a hybrid world. An SD-WAN enables the central control and management of multiple WAN links, allowing for optimization through the monitoring of packet loss, jitter, and latency on the various transport links. SD-WAN architectures enable the deployment of flexible open platforms that not only provide WAN optimization on links but also provide application acceleration, security, and visibility to effectively manage WAN network performance. SD-WAN, it is widely assumed, reduces, or eliminates the need for WAN optimization techniques. The reality is that SD-WAN and WAN optimization solve fundamentally different problems, and they complement one another when used together. Access to medication is one of the most important aspects of ensuring patient recovery and ongoing health in the case of TrialCard Incorporated, which provides patient affordability, medication access and adherence, patient support, and clinical trial services on behalf of pharmaceutical manufacturers. TrialCard provides services and solutions that connect patients with the care and medications they require at a significantly reduced, and in some cases, no cost. However, there were issues with the company’s telecommunications providers dropping connections, resulting in extended periods of downtime. Even with two high-bandwidth circuits from two different providers, the problem persisted, and manually switching from one to the other took time. Billy Vaughan, senior network engineer at TrialCard, explains, “Losing just two packets to one of our call centers would cause the connection to drop, which meant agents could be down for up to 15 minutes. We’ve had that happen more than once in a day.” Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform was tested and put through its paces in the company’s largest call center. The EdgeConnect platform has been deployed in high availability (HA) configurations at all TrialCard’s call centers, business offices, and data centers across the United States, as well as external third-party processors in Europe. The call centers now have stable, high-quality connectivity to their VoIP call system, as well as virtual desktops used for managing customer calls and processing orders through a host of internally developed applications running in the corporate data centers, thanks to SD-WAN overlays across both VPLS circuits and, in some cases, a third cable broadband link. “The EdgeConnect appliances arrived on site right at the peak of when we were having carrier outages. As soon as EdgeConnect was deployed, the network was so stable, we were informed by senior management that we were not to remove it. They didn’t want to risk any additional customer impact in order to test another vendor,” said Ryan Van Dynhoven, Director of Infrastructure, TrialCard Incorporated. Building on a strong foundation of Aruba work-from-home solutions like remote access points (RAPs), EdgeConnect Microbranch provides organizations with a modern, massively scalable way to power remote work in home and small offices, as well as temporary locations.  EdgeConnect Microbranch extends SD-WAN services and the SASE framework to the edge, via cloud-native Aruba Central for management and any Aruba Wi-Fi access point—no gateway, agent or appliance required at the remote site. As part of AI-powered Aruba ESP, EdgeConnect Microbranch builds on existing cloud-managed Wi-Fi capabilities like zero touch provisioning and role-based access control with services such as intelligent policy-based routing, dynamic tunnel and route orchestration, enhanced WAN troubleshooting tools, and SASE integration. These new capabilities give IT teams greater control and visibility into the remote network, without the additional overhead of on-premises hardware or appliances. Now IT can optimize the remote network to ensure that remote employees experience the same quality of service and access to resources as they do on campus—while protecting against security threats without disrupting remote worker productivity. Aruba access points are automatically configured, so employees just plug them into any existing Internet connection and they’re ready to go. ClearPass looks at each connection and uses device and user context to simplify the authentication process, while allowing for certificates instead of passwords, rules based on the devices being used, and even the user’s location. By extending an enterprise Aruba network into the home, Aruba Central allows IT admins to look at and monitor Aruba APs for an improved help desk experience. HPE (Aruba and Silver Peak) was recently named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure in 2021. Silver Peak was acquired by HPE in 2020. Silver Peak was named a Leader in the 2018 report, 2019, and 2020 report. Gartner evaluated 15 vendors in the Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure report based on two primary criteria: Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. The report contains a summary of each vendor, as well as an evaluation of each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses. According to Gartner, “This market continues to migrate from traditional branch routers (often called ‘customer edge routers’ in a Multiprotocol Label Switching implementation) used to connect branch locations to the data center to SD-WAN with a more-decentralized architecture and cloud workloads. SD-WAN is widely replacing edge routers and adding application aware path selection across multiple links, centralized orchestration and native security, as well as other application performance optimization functions (such as WAN optimization).” “Aruba’s SD-WAN portfolio allows organizations of all sizes across all industries to address a broad set of use cases, wherever they may be on their digital transformation journey,” said David Hughes, chief product and technology officer at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “We believe being named a Leader four years in a row serves as further validation that our edge-to-cloud approach is solid and can support enterprises as they adapt to compete in a highly dynamic business environment.” Learn more about and download a copy of the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure report .