Pre-GITEX Interview with Jacob Chacko from Aruba

This year, for our pre-GITEX feature, we spoke with Jacob Chacko, Regional Director – Middle East, Saudi & South Africa at Aruba, an HPE company. We discussed the brand’s expectations from GITEX, as well as solutions Aruba offers businesses. Check out the replies we received.

TECHx: How excited are you for GITEX Technology Week? What are your hopes from this year’s event?

Jacob: GITEX, with its position as the Middle East’s largest tech exhibition and networking platform, is the perfect venue for us to showcase our technology in simple, yet innovative ways. Our solutions address the specific needs and imperatives of different industries and create value through transformed customer experiences and accelerated financial outcomes. We constantly strive to build loyalty among our customers as well as channel partners (including distributors), and events like GITEX go a long way in helping us do that.

Building relationships through face-to-face interactions is the secret to business success in the Middle East. Ever since the pandemic started in early 2020, we haven’t really been able to have those kinds of quality, personalized interactions. So we are excited at the prospect of getting back to an in-person event like GITEX where we can have one-to-one meetings with customers and partners and infuse them with excitement about our innovative technologies, as well as discuss our company roadmap and direction that is shaping the future of the networking industry.

TECHx: What are the key highlights of your participation at this year’s GITEX?

Jacob: Aruba will be exhibiting under the theme ‘Your Journey. Your Edge’. Today, more data than ever is generated at the Edge. Legacy networks are unable to cope with the massive amounts of data and decisions required in near real-time. Network architecture needs to utilize Artificial Intelligence in order to be predictive. That’s where Aruba ESP comes in. It is the industry’s first platform with an AI-powered ‘sixth sense’. The solution is designed to unify, automate, and secure the Intelligent Edge and help organizations harness its immense potential.

Aruba will demonstrate its latest technologies addressing the digital transformation needs of regional enterprises including:

• Edge transformation in action: New Aruba ESP use cases will be demonstrated across healthcare, education, hospitality, finance, manufacturing and retail.
• Unified Infrastructure: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation but created operational complexity for businesses. The company will showcase how its unified network simplifies network operations and boosts IT agility.
• Edge-to-cloud security: More remote workers mean more applications in the cloud. Aruba will discuss starting a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) journey with WAN and security transformation.
• AIOps: Event attendees can discover Aruba network’s sixth sense – one that automatically monitors and fixes Wi-Fi, wired and SD-WAN environments.
• As-a-service: Aruba executives will explain the company’s flexible consumption and financing options, to easily deploy new networking technologies in times of change.

An area of focus for the company at GITEX will be on its EdgeConnect platform – an SD-WAN edge solution. The technology is built for today’s edge-to-cloud enterprise and delivers the highest quality of experience for users and IT, no matter where applications reside. Aruba enables enterprises to build a modern WAN that drives maximum value from cloud and digital transformation initiatives with a self-driving network that learns and adapts to the needs of the business.

Aruba will also showcase the company’s 630 Series Access Points (APs) – the industry’s first enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 6E solution. The benefits of Wi-Fi 6E are clear and, alongside other important networking advancements, it is set to enable businesses to become more connected than ever before. Aruba’s WiFi 6E technology will enable businesses to dispense with sluggish connections and poor user experiences, and replace them with powerful, high-speed networks.

With organizations looking to lower their risk during uncertain times, Aruba executives are keen to discuss Aruba as-a-service and Aruba network as a service (NaaS) options that offer business and IT leaders greater visibility, control, and flexibility across hardware, software, and management operations. The pay-as-you-go budgeting model respects today’s organizational imperative of guarding the bottom line.

TECHx: How can HPE Aruba help businesses achieve important business goals through the usage of its solutions?

Jacob: The Hybrid Workplace is the future and this requires network intelligence and cloud-native capabilities to keep workers safe and productive. Below are some of the imperatives of a hybrid workplace that Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) addresses:

Extend the network to the home – The IT department ships an Access Point (AP) to the employee’s home; the employee plugs it in, downloads a configuration from the cloud, and they’re all set. Centrally managed access credentials map to corporate policies to keep the network secure. And it’s all centralized managed from the cloud—IT gets full visibility and AIOps assisted troubleshooting from anywhere

Reinforce in-office social distancing – As employees return to the office, it’s important for facilities to be able to modify floorplans based on foot traffic or to change cleaning schedules based on density. With Aruba WLAN’s built-In network intelligence and location-aware capabilities, it’s easy to use density mapping to keep the workplace safe.

Minimize risk with contact tracing – Aruba’s network-based approach uses both proximity and location telemetry to perform contact and location tracing, and the advanced AI capabilities ensure pinpoint accuracy so you’re able to see which people intersected and the exact location of the interaction.

Flexible financing and consumption – It’s now more important than ever to keep financial and consumption flexibility top of mind. Aruba as-a-service options allow you to respond to rapidly changing business requirements, manage tight budgets, and easily deploy the latest networking technologies.

Aruba has repeatedly been recognized by third party analysts as a leader in Wi-Fi 6, switching, SD-Branch, and a visionary in Data Center networking. The world’s largest companies rely on us to provide a secure, AI-powered edge services platform that spans across campus, branch, data center, and remote working environments. Aruba has been at the forefront of innovation since its start, and has continued to make significant investments to deliver Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), the first platform that goes well beyond conventional network management to provide AI-powered operations, provisioning, orchestration, security, and location services from the cloud. Combining over 18 years of proven wired and wireless network expertise with modeling telemetry data from over one million wired, wireless and SD-WAN devices, Aruba AI can identify anomalies and provide prescriptive recommendations that network administrators can trust. No other networking vendor has this level of AI expertise. Aruba as-a-service provides options for financial and consumption flexibility across hardware, software, and management operations. Flexible financing options include leasing, deferred payment, and buy-back programs for unlocking sunk costs. Consumption options include SaaS and NaaS solutions offered in simple pay-as-you-go subscriptions.