Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has expanded its Aruba Networking Central artificial intelligence (AI)-powered network management offering, with deployment options including a virtual private cloud (VPC) environment.
There are four distinct deployment options of the upgraded HPE Aruba Networking Central, which is said to be designed for business, which require the agility of cloud with specific data security, data control or regulatory requirements, and an on-premise option that can operate while being disconnected from the cloud. With the expansion, HPE claims it can provide the widest set of advanced network management capabilities available in the industry, and that it’s the only supplier to offer cloud-native AI operations via dedicated customer VPC, on-premise, software as a service or network as a service.
HPE believes such capability will address the requirements of enterprises and government entities alike, satisfying regulatory constraints and adherence to standards such as GDPR and Finra. An always-on, AI-powered automated network assistant expands AIOps capabilities by flagging optimisation alerts to help boost productivity when performance issues are discovered.
There are also increased global points of presence locations to ensure fast and efficient data routing for cloud-delivered HPE Aruba Networking Central, with dedicated instances in the US, Canada, the European Union, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and China.
The offering has also expanded full-stack network observability and data lake telemetry for both heterogenous network environments and critical IT applications with enhanced IT monitoring services. It has a device telemetry data lake of more than 5.2 million devices managed, and over two billion network devices served, representing a 30% and 100% year-over-year annualised growth rate respectively.
Among the new features is Aruba Networking Central On-Premises for Government, which is designed to provide a new deployment option that includes FIPS 140-2 certified server hardware to meet related government security requirements. This is intended to boost enterprise efficiency for emerging use cases such as AI data capture, training and inferencing, which require greater control via air-gapped on-premise and cloud-based VPC options. The public cloud and VPC deployment choices leverage the global presence of HPE GreenLake cloud, designed to offer local cloud presence in many geographies.
Other enhancements include an always-on, automated network AIOps capability for network operations and to detect performance issues. A fabric of AI assistants acts as network architect, monitoring and gathering data, and providing diagnostics and recommendations. This fabric, said HPE, will extend existing capacity and performance, close security gaps, and identify configuration errors before they impact network operations.
The offering also comes with a one-year subscription powered by OpsRamp for monitoring capabilities of third-party devices. HPE Aruba Networking Central will also provide deeper visibility into real-time apps such as Microsoft Teams for significantly improved voice and video call support.
“With these innovations, HPE now uniquely addresses the most pressing enterprise challenges for corporate, nonprofit and government entities with unprecedented network management deployment flexibility,” said Phil Mottram, executive vice-president and general manager at HPE Aruba Networking.
“Combined with our continued innovation across AI, security and connectivity, HPE Aruba Networking Central continues to offer the most powerful and versatile network management application on the market, helping organisations meet their security, privacy and control requirements.”
