ARUBA, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, announced Wednesday the Aruba Mobile First Platform, a software layer that uses application programming interfaces (APIs) to provide third-party developers and business leaders network insights to improve applications and services. The platform accelerates integration and innovation of mobile and IoT at the speed of the developer ecosystem, rather than the pace of a single vendor. Ammar Enaya, Regional Director, HPE Aruba, Middle East & Turkey, said "to support today's mobile first and rapidly developing IoT environment, networks must deliver more than connectivity. The days of one-dimensional networks designed for static functions are over. Modern networks must be able to easily adapt new application requirements on-demand. With actionable insights about the use of specific mobile apps and the operational technologies powered by IoT, they need to help organizations justify future digital technology investments." "The Aruba Mobile First Platform unlocks the ability for an ecosystem of developers and technology vendors to freely innovate, utilizing the rich contextual information the Aruba infrastructure collects from mobile and IoT devices, and dynamically customize networking functions in real-time. As a result, customers can improve existing and create new applications to enhance the customer experience, improve business operations, and drive new revenue opportunities." The foundation of the Aruba Mobile First Platform is built on ArubaOS 8.0, a new operating system that allows developers to leverage contextual information from the infrastructure via its northbound API. Deployed as a virtual machine (VM) on a server appliance, ArubaOS 8.0 significantly simplifies changes within the infrastructure and enables customers to instantly scale their networks. ArubaOS 8.0 also enables greater programmability in the Aruba infrastructure with the ability to upload custom app signatures in real-time. Developers and ecosystem partners can easily enable policy management and quality control for new, business critical applications – without requiring network upgrades or outages. Ecosystem partner, SkyFii, harnesses the power of the Aruba Mobile First Platform to help businesses analyze and visualize customer behavior data. Leveraging contextual data about users, devices, applications and location from the Aruba Analytics and Location Engine (ALE), SkyFii gives retailers a better understanding of behavior and lets them engage shoppers with targeted advertising and marketing calls to actions. The latest enhancements to Aruba ClearPass software as part of the Mobile First Platform deliver deeper insights into all connected devices and improves capabilities for third party integration. The new ClearPass Extensions make it easier for IT security professionals and developers to integrate cloud hosted technology services with Aruba ClearPass. Without major code changes to the base ClearPass software, ecosystem partners simply place their software into a repository that can be leveraged via an API. This allows customers to easily and quickly create automated workflows. The new ClearPass OnConnect is ideal for customers who are not ready for deploying 802.1X and RADIUS across their multivendor wired networks for IoT connectivity. Policy management for such environments can still be enabled, where all devices are profiled and placed into proper network segments, without extensive IT operational investment. The Aruba Mobile First Platform introduces advanced Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) analytics capabilities to the Meridian Mobile App Platform that go beyond simple monitoring of dwell times at a specific location. The new Meridian Goals feature leverages insights gathered via BLE to inform marketing and business development teams about the success or failure of their latest engagement campaigns, eliminating the need to sort through varied, detailed reports to determine the results of an engagement program. With the latest release of Meridian, businesses can now enable location sharing among visitors at venues or employees at work. Individuals running the same mobile app on their phone can share their physical location with colleagues and friends while retaining complete control of their privacy. These new features heighten the user experience and fuel business intelligence regarding collaboration in the workplace and customer behavior within public venues. Addressing the demands for highly customizable cloud networking solutions, Aruba has made significant advancements to its subscription-based, cloud-hosted network services solution, Aruba Central. With its multi-tenant architecture and the new managed services portal, Aruba Central allows resellers to rapidly create custom-branded managed services practice and deliver value added services to existing customers and tap into new opportunities. Existing customers and partners can now easily add Aruba Central to their portfolio by integrating it with their existing systems through APIs. Additionally, Aruba Central now includes enterprise-grade capabilities such as Aruba Clarity for predictive visibility to Wi-Fi health and Wi-Fi analytics for visibility to mobile user presence across different physical spaces. The new Aruba Central mobile app allows IT staff to deploy Wi-Fi, wired and WAN routing infrastructure components with zero touch. Taking advantage of the Aruba Mobile First Platform and to position our partners to be highly competitive in the rapidly changing mobility networking market, Aruba is introducing the Partner Ready for Networking program. This new channel program takes the best elements of the Aruba PartnerEdge and HPE Partner Ready programs to create a new program that enables partners to capitalize on the burgeoning enterprise mobility market opportunity. The new Partner Ready for Networking program delivers predictable profitability via deal protection and a simple structure that makes it easy to calculate deal profitability at the front-end and back-end. Channel partners benefit from expanded revenue opportunities by rewarding them for specializations in cross-selling and up-selling both wireless and switching solutions. Partners also have the opportunity to increase margins for expertise in recognized mobility competencies and the program offers enriched back-end incentives for specialized networking expertise. The ability to sell extensive services, including managed services such as Aruba Central, will further enhance partner margins and enable them to attain trusted advisor status with their customers. The ability for partners to move quickly and be responsive to their customers drove one of the core principles of the new program – to simplify and make it easier to do business. The Partner Ready for Networking Program offers a dedicated partner portal, streamlined one-page deal registration with simplified approval process, easy to understand program requirements with a single point of contact, and planned MDF and lead generation tools and services. With the new Partner Ready for Networking program, partners will significantly improve their competitive position while maximizing their revenue opportunities with a more predictable revenue stream. The Aruba Mobile First Platform and the associated enhancements to ArubaOS, Aruba Central, Aruba ClearPass and Aruba Meridian are available in the fourth quarter calendar year 2016.
