New Aruba solution unifies networks to provide ‘hyper-awareness’

HPE's Aruba has made enhancements to its Edge Services Platform (ESP) that unifies IoT, IT, and Operational Technology (OT) networks to enable customers to adapt to changing environments and user requirements.

Aruba ESP is a programmable platform that generates contextual information about identity, location, security posture, and in-use applications to guide decision making and AIOps.

Able to integrate with devices and applications from Aruba's technology partners, customers can now become hyper-aware of their operating environment so they can quickly adapt to evolving business, visitor, and employee demands.

Aruba access points and switches now serve as multi-protocol IoT/OT platforms that interface with Aruba's expanded technology partner ecosystem.

Virtually every subsystem spanning machine inputs and outputs (I/O) on a manufacturing floor through multimedia devices in the CEO suite can be accommodated – from social distance monitors to gunshot detectors, rotating equipment monitors to guest wayfinding – with solutions tailored for education, enterprise, healthcare, hospitality, industrial, manufacturing, retail, transportation, and government applications.

Use cases with Aruba ESP-based hyper-awareness include smart buildings, industrial/manufacturing facilities and the broader intelligent edge:

Smart buildings for enterprises, education, healthcare, hospitality, retail, and government

• Building control and digital twin enablement – Aruba and technology partners like Microsoft Azure IoT can create digital twins or software models to identify sub-optimised processes, recommend operational enhancements, and monitor the trajectory of energy usage needed for proactive interventions.
   
• Context-aware, real-time integrated emergency response and notification – Aruba ESP, with integrated solutions from technology partners like Critical Arc and Patrocinium, can actively communicate with tenants, visitors, and staff, and use unique 4D graphics for first responders to quickly see where people are situated within buildings.
   
• Extension of the 5G footprint with wi-fi – Aruba ESP allows mobile operators to extend their 5G footprint into the building and power Wi-Fi calling while delivering gigabit-class guaranteed performance using Aruba Air Slice technology.

Hyper-aware industrial facilities

• Migrating from break/fix to proactive maintenance – Through deep integration with technology partner devices like ABB's Ability Smart Sensor, Aruba ESP enables machinery sensors to monitor equipment like motor drives, valves, and pumps for abnormal behaviour, to identify points of failure before they happen.
   
• Reducing mean time to repair with location services – Native innovations from Aruba Meridian and Aruba ESP provides site occupants with turn-by-turn navigation to their destination without human assistance.
   
• Monitoring personnel and asset safety – Aruba ESP with technology partner Mobilaris can deliver real-time 3D situational awareness by tracking the location of people and assets and can integrate with automated ventilation, geofencing, and vehicular navigation systems.

To enable the automation needed to deliver these use cases at scale, Aruba AIOps uses AI and big data to continuously optimise, detect, isolate, and remediate network issues that impact reliability.

As sources of IoT, IT, and OT data expand, it becomes increasingly difficult to isolate the source of problems or optimise the infrastructure.

Aruba's Cloud AI already combines telemetry data from over 65,000 customers and one million network devices, supplemented with 18 years of domain expertise to inform supervised learning.

Aruba ESP produces AI-powered insights with greater than 95% accuracy to automatically improve communications and visibility across and among IoT, IT, and OT networks.

In addition to unified infrastructure and AIOps, ESP generates contextual data that make networks situationally aware for enterprise security.

The Zero Trust Security framework ensures no user or IoT device is granted entry or ongoing access unless trustworthy.

This framework uses AI and exchanges security and policy with more than 130 security technology vendors to obtain a deep understanding of each device and its role, allowing hyper-aware facilities to fold security activities into situational awareness.

"Machines, applications, and interfaces are typically tailored to each IoT, IT and OT vertical application, driving complexity in network management," says Moor Insights - Strategy senior analyst Will Townsend.

"I have analysed Aruba ESP and believe its architectural platform based on a unified infrastructure, zero-trust security, and AIOps has the potential to reduce complexity and accelerate smart facility and hyper-awareness use cases both on-prem and in the cloud."