We attended an event where HPE Aruba showcased their Aruba networking solutions. In attendance were all manner of folks from all types of organisations.

Those in the networking space already know about HPE Aruba but for those not in the know, they provide networking solutions for businesses. And, yes, it’s owned by HP (the PC maker).

You can read more about them here. 

They compete with the likes of Cisco, TP-Link, Huawei, Fortinet etc. 

So they make and manage products like Wi-Fi routers, switches, and network security systems for businesses and organisations. Do note they have solutions for enterprises and smaller businesses. 

They showcased their tech and went into why they are superior to the competition, as you would expect. Not being too well-versed with their world, I couldn’t tell you if they indeed are superior but it did sound impressive. 

The slide below sums up what they consider to be the Aruba advantage.

They touted their Unified SASE implementation, which in normalspeak is a cloud-based approach to network security that combines networking and security functionalities. 

Apparently, it delivers a set of security services like secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers (CASB), firewall as a service (FWaaS), and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) all from a single cloud platform.

On the hardware front, I was particularly impressed by one of their switches which has a switching capacity of 2.5Tbps for data transmission and a forwarding rate of 1905 Mpps for swift packet delivery. 

The bad boy has 48x 10GB ports and 6x 40GB ports. You can connect a whole small village with that kind of hardware. 

For small businesses

The above mainly applies to enterprise clients. For small businesses, HPE Aruba has the Instant On range of access points and switches. They are easy to set up and manage if the demonstrations were anything to go by. I’m saying this as someone with no technical expertise. 

Here are some key features of HPE Aruba Instant On:

• Easy to set up and manage: The Aruba Instant On app makes it simple to configure and manage your network, even from your phone. It looked simple to me, at least. 
• Scalable: You can easily add more access points and switches as your business grows.
• Secure: HPE Instant On products include a variety of security features to help protect your network.

There’s more that I didn’t get into, so if any of this sounds interesting to you, do your research on HPE Aruba.

At the event, I talked to a few people who were excited about what they heard. Some guys with VoIP solutions thought the network management tools HPE Aruba offers would save them time and money in trying to troubleshoot when there are problems.

Some guys representing schools also echoed the same, praising the remote monitoring and management features. So I guess, that could mean easy management could be a key selling point.

All I know is that whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, HPE Aruba is looking to steal you from your current provider. The competition is good, so do your research.

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