The sudden change from in-office to work-from-home has completely changed how organizations are providing the tools and support that employees need to be productive.
Work from home has dramatically increased the size and complexity of the “edge” which brings with it added connectivity, security, and management challenges that require analytics and automation, a centralized management view, and new services to be successful.
As we start transitioning to a hybrid environment - one where a portion of the workforce is in-office at least some of the time, the opportunity to blend the home and in-office experience requires workspaces to be modular, flexible, and seamlessly integrated.
In today’s blog, we identify three challenges we’ve seen IT teams face in moving their workplace into a hybrid environment and how Aruba's Edge Services Platform (ESP) can help them overcome them - all while working within your budget.
Challenge #1: How can my users be secure and productive from anywhere?
Work from home arrived suddenly and Aruba customers benefited from the purpose-built remote connectivity solutions supported by the security, control, and cloud-based management that enabled them to respond quickly and efficiently.
Aruba solutions take each of the following three key areas into account – Security and Privacy, the performance and other manageability of our solutions, and finally, the overall user experience which affects user productivity and satisfaction:
To ensure security and privacy for your hybrid workers, we recommend three key things to include on your checklist:
- Encrypt traffic to the corporate network
- Enable Zero Trust security controls
- Have VDI support
Aruba ESP offers the following performance and manageability of their solutions for the IT Team:
- Enterprise-grade hardware
- Centralized IT monitoring and troubleshooting
- Cloud-managed
A better User Experience through:
- Zero Touch Provisioning
- In-office experience and connectivity
- Access to local services
Challenge #2: Which roles and personalities thrive in a remote work environment?
Aruba offers a rich, mature portfolio of remote access solutions that reduce the time, effort, and overhead of setting up a remote worker while maintaining the security and control that organizations need.
Each of these solutions leverage both encrypted VPN technology as well as Aruba’s Policy Enforcement Firewall for identity-based access control and Aruba Central for operations management.
Solutions range from:
- The Aruba VIA software client for single workers requiring remote access using a device running Windows, MacOS, IOS, Android or Linux.
- Remote Access Points, which are purpose-built home office solutions that securely project the corporate network into the home with zero-touch provisioning.
- Aruba Instant Access Points which establish the same secure VPN connection with the corporate network for a small office environment
Challenge #3: How should I manage physical locations and monitor space utilization?
Through Aruba’s expertise in network traffic and data, Aruba has delivered key capabilities related to location analytics and contact tracing through WI-FI, Bluetooth, IoT sensors, Edge APs, and other capabilities:
- Edge APs listen for user Wi-Fi devices and/or BLE wearable tags
- Cloud-based proximity apps process user location data and apply AI/ML Proximity Models
- Pre-emptive planning with Location Tracing to record dwell time at various building locations
- Immediate Response with Contact Tracing to show overlap time between individuals
Important questions to ask:
- Where can touchless solutions be used more effectively?
- How does the network play a bigger role in security and crisis management, should any health or other type of emergency arise?
- What about automatically adjusting physical and environmental factors for each individual based on their learned preferences?
Regardless of where you are in your journey, VLCM and Aruba can help tools you can use today, with an extensible ecosystem build your office of the future and transition to the hybrid workplace. Learn more about what Aruba ESP has to offer.
Other Hybrid Workplace Resources:
- PCs To Help Your Employees Adapt To The Hybrid Workplace
- How to create a secure and connected hybrid workplace in 4 steps
