“Aruba Leads the Pack” is how Forrester puts it in their recent report, The Forrester New Wave™: Wireless Solutions, Q3 2019 – The Eight Solutions That Matter Most and How They Stack Up. The objective of the report is to assist infrastructure and operations professionals to choose the proper partner for their requirements for both Wi-Fi and the burgeoning need to connect a large range of IoT devices and protocols as a part of their digital transformation.
Aruba is the only vendor within the “Leaders” class, delivering, in our opinion, a commanding performance that features a differentiated rating, the highest possible in 6 out of the 10 evaluation criteria provided by Forrester:
- Wireless connectivity
- Wireless hardware
- Spectrum/device visibility
- Security
- Solution positioning
- Road map
Forrester’s view that the new wave of wireless solutions embodies wayfinding, location services, and IoT connectivity aligns closely with the capabilities in Aruba’s wireless portfolio. As Aruba’s CTO, Partha Narasimham says, “the network has become the central nervous system” for IT – enabling services that offer location data and real-time directions, visibility into assets and other people to boost operations and connecting Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to the business to support digital transformation.
Wi-Fi As An IoT Platform is More Than Connectivity
The world of IoT comprises various device types but conjointly a wide variety of protocols. Wi-Fi 6, Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 enable “things” from door locks to electronic shelf labels to insulin monitors to act with the network in order to deliver exceptional user experiences and value to the business.
Traditionally, it’s needed to stand up overlay networks to accommodate these protocols, but now, as highlighted within the Forrester report, wireless connectivity solutions should expand beyond Wi-Fi. For this reason, Aruba has integrated support for IoT protocols in our latest Wi-Fi 6 access points and can be allowing new IoT growth radios to assist existing customers to maximize investment protection – for additional data, look into our IoT session at mobility Field Day 4. But you don’t become the leader of the pack by stopping at easy connectivity. Aruba starts at the start of the IoT value chain to deliver a holistic solution—from setup to application integration to a business result. Beyond the networking infrastructure, the main focus of our IoT solution is to simply enable third-party integrations with our ArubaEdge partners, which include:
- Siemens – for converged, plant-wide networks that bridge OT and IT.
- EnOcean – for connected lighting, sensors, and different systems
- SES-Imagotag – for electronic shelf labels
- Solu-M – for electronic shelf labels
- Zebra Technologies – for tablets, imagers, scanners, and printers
- ZF Openmatics – for industrial-grade asset tracking solutions
- And additional partners listed on our IoT ecosystem
The Aruba wireless LAN is front-and-center, providing Dynamic Segmentation to deliver intelligent deep packet review that isolates mission-critical applications, separates them from the remainder of the network and forwards their traffic to the suitable destination. This level of insight is essential to make sure that the network is optimized for the convergence of IoT systems while minimizing the impact on mobile users.
Based on Forrester’s evaluation, Aruba is the best fit for corporations needing advanced wireless services – and this is why we believe they named Aruba as the Leader in this business-critical spectrum.
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