Adoption of Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) seems to be on the rise, even though the term was developed many years ago. What has really changed since the term was first introduced? Why does it seem like a resurgence of organizations are taking advantage of NaaS offerings from vendors like HPE Aruba? Is it a resurgence or is NaaS just coming to fruition as a reality due to market and technology dynamics? I got a chance to sit down, compliments of Zoom, with Jambu Guruswami, VP of Global Services at HPE Aruba, to get his perspective on why NaaS demand is growing. Jambu has been leading and developing service solutions for customers for many years. Here is an excerpt of our conversation on the topic.
Cathy: What do you think has triggered the rise in demand for NaaS today?
Jambu: If you look at our customers, the networks are coming more complex. A proliferation of devices, such as mobile and IOT, have created a greater demand and mix of the items on the network to manage. The traffic patterns and demands on the network are continuously changing. Additionally, the end users are looking to leverage inherent network intelligence to improve productivity or services - for example, occupancy sensors, temperature sensors, contactless badge readers, location and contact tracking technology, and more are now stitched together in a unique way. IT resources are not growing. The network is often not efficiently tuned to meet these new demands.
Previously, managed services included simple monitoring, such as determining whether a device was up or down, monitoring bandwidth and ensuring the quality of service. Only a handful of parameters were tracked to take action. But now, the complexities require tracking symptoms, correlating symptoms with a variety of situations and taking more prescriptive actions.
- Organizations are falling behind, technical depth is mounting in managing upgrades, product, security, and vulnerability issue tracking. There are too many dynamics to keep pace.
- Thresholds are no longer simply about utilization. Today it’s about the experience for customers across different applications, devices, and usage from different end users.
Because of these dynamics, there is a need for massive automation and adaptation of the network beyond resources available today in most IT organizations. An enormous amount of knowledge can be harvested and leveraged to make the next generation of NaaS blended with the expertise of vendors like Aruba.
Cathy: What specific technology advancements do you think have become necessary to help with the adoption of NaaS now?
Jambu: The network is not stationary. Traffic patterns vary widely – east and west, north and south. It is extremely important for the network to be tuned based on the way the organization is moving.
Next generation platforms are needed where automation and adaptation techniques are available to evaluate patterns and proactively optimize the network while handling day to day activities. Network vendors have the unique advantage to utilize techniques and trends collectively developed through their footprint of established customers and experience to develop the technology solutions with the right set of automation and adaptation technology.
Aruba is unique. We built an intelligent operations platform to automate and use different machine learning (ML) techniques to appropriately manage customer networks leveraging our expertise in working with our customer base and the experiences across every vertical market segment.
Cathy: Why didn’t NaaS make sense before?
Jambu: Networks previously were many islands stitched together. There weren’t any architectures available like HPE Aruba ESP, which had the elements to bring a unified policy that can address the needs across wired and wireless networks. Aruba has addressed these capabilities with our management tools, such as Central and ClearPass policy manager, to accomplish that ability.
Artificial Intelligence operations (AI Ops) is another innovative and unique capability that allows HPE Aruba to better monitor and automate the network. Aruba Service Manager (ASM) brings a service management layer to operationalize IT workflows. NOC teams can be easily inundated with the volume of alerts and notifications. With ASM, it provides the ability to distill the noise, aggregate and enable the NOC team with more actionable recommendations.
Our journey started with our customers and our partners. At Aruba, we built this engine from the ground up and worked with our field and support teams who work with thousands of customers daily. We were able to harness the variety of other data sources and uniquely combine them to address operational issues.
Our NaaS solution is unique. For a differentiated experience, Aruba along with our partners are working together to deliver an experience for our customers by combining our capabilities. We are delivering more effective proactive and predictive managed services. Our model has served us well. We are now expanding our opportunities with our partners. This is the crux of Aruba NaaS. We work with our customers and partners to optimize their end user experience. At the end of the day, our goal is a zero-ticket experience.
Interested in learning more?
- Read this HPE .nxt article to hear what IDC industry analyst, Susan Middleton, and Aruba, a Hewlitt Packard Enterprise Company, CTO office vice president, David Logan, have to say about NaaS
- Read what JD Singh, Head of Global Services at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company had to say about NaaS in a recent interview
- Read more about Aruba NaaS
Cathryn Won
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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CathyWon
I am a marketing consultant from eTeam, a consulting agency, working at HPE with a background in business development, product marketing, product management and engineering within networking, security and storage industries...
