Aruba launches MOVE to help enterprise embrace smartphones & tablets

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 16 March 2011 07:41

Business IT - Networking

Aruba Networks has introduced it Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE), technology designed to sit in an enterprise data centre or be hosted by a cloud provider and authenticate and manage all devices seeking access to the corporate network: from internal ethernet and WiFi networks, public WiFi hotspots, cellular networks, employees' homes etc.

According to Aruba, while technologies are available from other vendors to fulfil these functions, an enterprise would require a separate system for each type of access. "MOVE enables IT departments to centralise network service delivery, maintain security on both wired and wireless networks regardless of the device being used and easily provision and manage the new, highly-mobile class of users, devices and applications that will dominate networks by 2014."

Bobby Guhasarkar, the senior director of product management at Aruba Networks, at a launch event in Sydney, said: "This is our biggest launch ever as a company. We have eight new products. We have a solution for bringing your iPad [or other device] to work and a new mobility architecture for enterprises."

He explained: "When a device comes on to the network we can detect what device it is and what version of the OS it is running. After we do that we make the user register the iPad onto the corporate network and we push a certificate onto the IPad that allows it to be used on the corporate network because it marries that device to the user.

"Finally, with our management system we can track all the iPads in the corporate environment: who is using them and what they are accessing."

At the heart of the MOVE architecture is ArubaOS Mobility Services that, according to Aruba, "enables the development, deployment and enforcement of a single set of network services that manage security, policy and network performance for every user and device on the network, regardless of access type'¦This mobility- and user-centric approach enables a necessary shift away from more than 20 years of port-centric network architectures in order to reduce costs and enable workforce mobility."

Services provided by ArubaOS Mobility Services include "new guest access capabilities, new device fingerprinting, mobile device access control, role-based policy enforcement, application traffic management and RF and spectrum management'¦content security, identity management and PCI compliance," Aruba says.

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