aruba networks

“There is a major change in the types of devices and number of devices that any sort of organization needs to support these days,” said Robert Fenstermacher, head of Global Education Marketing at Aruba. “There is now a lot of high-bandwidth, low-latency traffic running over wireless networks, but companies are having a difficult time managing that traffic.”

As a first step the company sponsored a working group made up of members of the higher education, enterprise and K-12 communities. The group was tasked to come up with a definition and best practices for designing implementing and maintaining that next-generation wireless network.

Following the working group’s findings, “Aruba really tried to fully define our solution for multimedia grade and highlight areas where validated that solution,” Fenstermacher said. “When it comes down to it, there are a lot of different considerations in the areas of capacity, application assurance and requirements around mobility, or that ability to get from point to point.”

Next-generation networks, he said, will be the ones with solutions that focus heavily in those areas. Aruba has already started down that path by incorporating new features into its technology, but Fenstermacher noted the industry as a whole is in the first stages of dealing with the multimedia mobility landslide.

“Channel partners are going to have to play a more consultative role than they ever had in helping customers realize what it’s going to take to handle the mix of devices and applications on the network,” he said. “There are enough differences in way each vendor supports things to need a level of knowledge about the technology in general. Mobility is driving a lot of confusion regarding how to make changes in the network.

“Wireless brings forth so many more challenges than wired ever did,” he added.

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