Ranked First in Five of Six Use Cases in Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE: HPE), today announced that in Gartner Inc.’s latest “Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure” report, HPE (Aruba) has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant for the fourteenth yearand has received the highest score in five out of six use cases within the Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, a companion report to the Magic Quadrant.
The 2019 “Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure” marks the eighth time that Gartner has combined wired and wireless LAN infrastructure into one report. Each year, Aruba has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant. Prior to that, Aruba was also positioned as a Leader six years running in the Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN Access Infrastructure (2006-2011).
In the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner continues, as it has previously, to evaluate vendors based on two primary criteria: completeness of vision and ability to execute. The report includes a summary of each vendor, as well as an assessment of each vendor’s strengths and cautions.
In the companion piece to the Magic Quadrant, the Gartner Critical Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, Gartner evaluated vendor effectiveness in addressing an organization’s needs in six key use cases: Unified wired and WLAN access, WLAN-only refresh/new build, Wired-only access refresh/new build, Remote branch office with corporate HQ, Performance stringent applications and Hands-off netops. Aruba received the highest scores in five of six of these use cases, and in the sixth – Wired-only access refresh/new build – was rated second.
“We’re gratified to see once again Gartner’s recognition of HPE (Aruba) as a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, as well as the highest ranking in five of six use cases within the accompanying Criticial Capabilities for Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure,” said Chris Kozup, chief marketing officer at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “We believe our continued philosophy of Customer First, Customer Last, coupled with a stellar product portfolio that addresses the mobile, cloud and IoT challenges our customers face, has positioned us for continued success and recognition in the networking industry.”
My journey into Romania revealed a country with spectacular sights dotted with nature, medieval castles and quaint villages and the best food and culture. The visit to Prahova Valley with a stop in Sinaia, one of the most beautiful mountain tourist resorts in Romania is a must.
A hidden gem for travel aficionados, Romania was full of surprises. For instance, the Palace of Parliament is the second largest administrative building and the most expensive administrative building in the world as well as the world’s heaviest building. We found the building served as a perfect backdrop to show the amazing architecture of the city as the building was built with 100% Romanian resources and materials.
Another must visit is the PeleşCastle. Recognized as royal residence by Carol I, the king of Romania, the castle is one of the most beautiful castles in Europe, built between 1873 and 1914 as the summer residence of the kings of Romania. The building, currently owned by the Royal Family of Romania ids filled with the most beautiful decorative art pieces.
As we ventured further to Brasov, we came across variants of gothic, baroque and renaissance architecture with continued our journey exploring the Town Hall Square and enjoyed a walk to the walled citadel and the pedestrian only boulevard for retail therapy. Surrounded by mountains, a walk around Brasov reveals quaint shops and restaurants serving authentic local cuisine.
After a brief stop in Bran at a wine cellar, we then visited Bran Castle, built in the medieval period as a strategic point of defense. Bran Castle, set on a 200 foot high rock was associated with the famous Bram Stoker’s novel and is nowadays known as the “Castle of Count Dracula”. It was one of the dark, scary and yet the most exciting attractions we went to during our trip.
Our journey to Bâlea Cascadă, Transfăgărăşan, the best road in the world according to Top Gear was particularly exciting as we visited the Paltinu Chalet, built during the communist regime and had a Romanian-style lunch on Bâlea Lake, a glacier lake at an altitude of 2034 m.
From Bâlea Lake, we headed to Sibiu, which was European Capital of Culture in 2007. We visited the Astra Museum in Sibiu, the largest outdoor ethnographic museum in Europe. The visit included a carriage ride through the museum park with a tasting of authentic Romanian products. The city was founded at the end of the 12thcentury and is one of the main tourist centers in Romania. Another must stop is Alba Iulia, a town considered Romania’s “second capital” and a place full of history.
My favourite visit was to the Salina Turda, a real Salt Mining Museum in Transylvania. Salt air is good for health, and the place is considered to have the purest air on the planet. It was a surreal experience and we thoroughly enjoyed strolling near the lakes at the bottom of the mine.
These are many reasons to visit Romania from the charming disposition of the locals, the breathtaking landscapes, vampire tourism and the wide variety of fresh wholesome food.
I flew to Romania with Turkish Airlines with a stop in Istanbul. There is enough time to experience the Turkish Airlines award winning lounge in between the flights or enjoy the retail experience at the new airport in Istanbul.
Mindware, one of the leading Value Added Distributors (VAD’s) in the Middle East and Africa, announced the launch of its new cloud Marketplace today. Offering superior transactional experience to the channel community as well as a wide variety of cloud solutions and services, the Mindware Marketplace will increase cloud adoption for partners and their customers. The new Marketplace which is hosted on Microsoft Azure, will, in addition to making cloud services purchase easy and intuitive, offer Mindware’s regional partners the ability to set up and manage their own “white labeled storefront”, thereby offering cloud solutions directly to end-customers.
Vijay Kumar, CTO and cloud Director at Mindware said, “There has been an acceleration in cloud adoption in the region as a result of major cloud service providers such as Microsoft establishing physical data centers in the Middle East. Organizations are more comfortable with consuming these services now that data sovereignty and security matters are no longer a concern. As a leading regional distributor and in line with our ‘partner experience first’ philosophy, we realized the need to offer a feature-rich platform to enable our partners to develop their capabilities and offerings and to take their business to the next level.”
“We’re transforming the way our partners define their growth, and we’re helping them drive digital transformation in their customers’ businesses. Mindware is a great example of how partners are differentiating themselves today and recognizing the changing digital technology to solve problems utilizing cloud computing. There is a huge opportunity around cloud migration and together with our partners, our goal is to help our customers find the right solution at the right time,” said Karim Hanafy, Microsoft Area Services Partners Lead, One Commercial Partner – Middle East & Africa.
The new marketplace, which can be custom-branded by partners, has several new and enhanced capabilities including a robust and customizable billing engine, which allows partners to easily automate ordering and billing the entire Microsoft portfolio including Office 365, Microsoft Azure and Microsoft ESD. Partners can monitor and control their customers’ Microsoft Azure consumption with automated provisioning of cloud services and utilization-based billing.
The Marketplace will allow partners to deliver hosted Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings via the platform. The interface is intuitive and helps partners to place orders faster and it offers recommendations when products are being purchased to provide an optimized solution.
Mindware has more than 2 decades of product, technical and licensing expertise as an Authorised Microsoft Distributor and collaborates with qualified cloud consultants throughout the region.
“Mindware is delighted to announce the launch of its new Marketplace. With Microsoft, being one of our strategic partners in our cloud journey, this new Marketplace, built on Azure, allows our partners to be more productive and profitable. In addition to the platform, Mindware is launching various joint solutions with Microsoft, including Mindware Secure and Connected Workplace® – a novel cloud solutions approach based on Microsoft 365 that will enable resellers to provide customers with an “all-inclusive” migration, productivity, device management and collaboration solution.”-Philippe Jarre, CEO, Mindware
Abu Dhabi Municipality has overhauled its legacy networking infrastructure and deployed powerful new Wi-Fi 6 technology from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, that has laid the foundation for its Smart Digital Workplace initiative, which will transform digital experiences for employees, suppliers and citizens.
Mr. Ahmad Al Hammadi, IT Manager at Abu Dhabi Municipality says, “We understand that the future of work will be defined by smart work experiences enabled by the right technologies. Our intention was to create a smart workplace that will enables creativity, collaboration, speed, and freedom. Our legacy networking infrastructure was a big hurdle in achieving this objective, with operational complexities and security issues, and hence we decided to work with HPE Aruba, a pioneer in the wireless networking space. They were one of the vendors capable of delivering a unique wireless ecosystem, thus acting as an overall solution provider for all our mobility needs.”
Aruba’s latest 802.11ax AI-powered WiFi 6 solutions were selected for the deployment across Abu Dhabi Municipality’s headquarters and 35 branches across the city. As defending against internal threats was a critical security requirement, the government agency automated security access control across its entire access network with Aruba ClearPass Policy Manager, and enforced the continuous analysis of Network Traffic and User and Entity Behaviour with the deployment of Machine Learning technologies provided by Aruba’s threat detection platform, Introspect.
With a high speed, secure wireless infrastructure as the foundation, Abu Dhabi Municipality will introduce a number of new applications that will enable employees to utilize their smartphones to become more productive. One such application will allow employees to book meeting rooms on their smart devices. The implementation will benefit third party suppliers who visit the Municipality, who will now be able to connect securely and speedily to the new network and transact business without having to go through slow and lengthy authentication procedures. Citizens visiting the four customer happiness centres in Abu Dhabi will also experience gigabit speed browsing capabilities when connecting to the new wireless network.
“We are proud to have been able to play a role in Abu Dhabi Municipality’s digital transformation journey by delivering a robust wireless ecosystem, incorporating high-speed connectivity, secure access, BYOD support and centralized monitoring and management in a single solution. We hope to be able to continue this partnership as the Municipality’s digital aspirations evolve in the future,” concludes Gamal Emara, country manager – UAE at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.
Value Added Distributor to unveil new technical sales and service unit as well as end-to-end desktop and application virtualization infrastructure solution
Mindware, one of the leading regional IT Value-Added Distributors, has announced its participation under the theme ‘Embark on a Customer Journey’ at GITEX Technology Week taking place between 06 -10 October 2019 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The highlight of the company’s participation this year is the launch of a new ‘Solutions Unit’ comprising of Pre-sales and Services teams focusing on infrastructure, security and cloud solutions. The company will also unveil an end-to-end desktop and application virtualization infrastructure solution, that resellers can offer their customers, that is flexible, reliable, scalable and easy to deploy.
Mostafa Kabel, Solutions Unit Manager at Mindware said, “Technological mix and complexity in the ever-changing IT landscape require successful implementation of IT solutions which are critical to customer business success. Mindware helps its partners achieve this with its newly formed Solutions team, which includes a pool of exceptional technical subject-matter experts capable of addressing technology concerns, simplifying technology and deploying it efficiently in complex IT infrastructures, cyber security and cloud environments.”
The collective experience of the Solutions team covers all areas of IT such as strategic consulting, designing, planning, deploying, implementing and technical trainings.
The Pre-sales Unit will comprise of technical engineers with the highest levels of training and certification in relevant vendor technologies. There will be two separate teams – one focused on datacenter & infrastructure solutions and the other on security. The teams will add value to partners by helping them qualify leads, conduct proof of concepts (PoC) and close projects.
The Solutions Unit will focus on three areas – professional services, cloud services and training. The professional services team will assist partners in designing and implementing the best possible solution, if required, at the customer’s premises. The cloud offerings include areas such as Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) and BackUp, cloud security, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Mindware training services reflect the latest practices and procedures which help in increasing the value to customer environments. The company is an Authorized Training Center (ATC) with fully certified and authorized trainers who offer specialist knowledge reinforced by extensive practical experience.
GITEX is also the launchpad for Mindware’s new Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) bundle – an end-to-end solution stack comprising best of breed technologies including infrastructure-servers by Dell Technologies, security by RSA, virtualization software by Citrix and a choice of Wyse and OptiPlex client endpoints. The solution stack has been fully optimized and validated for interoperability and offers customers cost savings of up to 39% as compared to traditional solutions. Mindware’s services bundle includes consulting, deployment, support & management and training.
Fast and efficient charge for multiple devices a hit with consumers
Anker Innovations’ PD chargers that can be used to power a wide variety of different devices are gaining popularity as they are designed to deliver the fastest possible charging speed at the shortest time to any USB-C or Lightning devices that support Power Delivery.
Faraz Mehdi, Regional Sales Head at Anker Innovations MEA said,
“Anker’s world class innovations are reflected in its products. Unlike most PD
chargers that are optimized for just one device, Anker accessories cater to
multiple devices without compromising on the speed of charging. If your phone
takes near 3 hours for a full charge, then you need an Anker charger and cable
for a more efficient charge.”
Proven to be faster than inbox chargers, Anker has
incorporated the PD Technology in wall chargers, cables, PowerBanks, car
chargers and desktop chargers.
The PD chargers are perfect for all types of devices such as
laptops, tablets, phones, hand held gaming consoles, audio products and smart
watches.
Anker will be showcasing their products at Gitex 2019 in
Sheikh Maktoum Hall at Booth SM B1.
Anker, Eufy, Nebula, Roav and Soundcore products to take centre stage at the annual Technology Show
Anker Innovations’ will be showcasing their new products at Gitex 2019 in Sheikh Maktoum Hall at Booth SM B1 from the 6th to the 10th of October 2019.
Faraz Mehdi, Regional Sales Head at Anker Innovations MEA said, “We are delighted to be at this year’s GITEX with a strong representation from our core brands and our team will be introducing the latest products in chargers, cables, audio, smart home entertainment, smart home appliances, security cameras,”
To meet the growing demand in charging and smart home products and solutions, the brand caters to the needs of discerning consumers in search of fast charging solutions, innovative products and appliances as well as a range of portable entertainment products and technologies.
Anker stand will showcase chargers and cables, Soundcore will feature audio products, Eufy for smart home appliances and security products, Nebula for home entertainment and ROAV will have smart car accessories.
Anker experts will be on hand at Gitex talking about the dynamic approach of the brand in meeting end users’ expectations in Sheikh Maktoum Hall at Booth SM B1.
Anker, Eufy, Nebula, Roav and Soundcore products to take centre stage at the annual Technology Show
Anker Innovations’ will be showcasing their new products at Gitex 2019 in Sheikh Maktoum Hall at Booth SM B1 from the 6th to the 10th of October 2019.
Faraz Mehdi, Regional Sales Head at Anker Innovations MEA said, “We are delighted to be at this year’s GITEX with a strong representation from our core brands and our team will be introducing the latest products in chargers, cables, audio, smart home entertainment, smart home appliances, security cameras,”
To meet the growing demand in charging and smart home products and solutions, the brand caters to the needs of discerning consumers in search of fast charging solutions, innovative products and appliances as well as a range of portable entertainment products and technologies.
Anker stand will showcase chargers and cables, Soundcore will feature audio products, Eufy for smart home appliances and security products, Nebula for home entertainment and ROAV will have smart car accessories.
Anker experts will be on hand at Gitex talking about the dynamic approach of the brand in meeting end users’ expectations in Sheikh Maktoum Hall at Booth SM B1.
Kodak Alaris is launching a new wave of network-connected scanning solutions aimed at tackling the most difficult pain points organizations face when onboarding information into line-of-business applications. The Alaris INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solutionand the Kodak Scan Station 730EX Plus Scannerautomate business processes by seamlessly connecting document capture to existing business systems and the cloud. Benefits include fewer touchpoints and less human error, making the entire information capture process smarter and more efficient.
The Alaris INfuse Solution integrates directly with enterprise applications and enables customers to carry out tasks in hours which, in the past, may have taken days to complete. INfuse also offers an unprecedented opportunity for channel partners to engage with customers to streamline expensive business processes and quickly grow new revenue streams.
The inspiration for INfuse comes directly from channel partner and end user feedback. Solution providers need cost-effective ways to install and manage a fleet of devices while helping enterprise customers efficiently and correctly onboard information into business processes. To address these needs, the Alaris INfuse Solution includes three key components.
Alaris AX INfuse Scanner product photography, BPO, Service Bureau
Partner Software Application– An Alaris channel partner or solution provider (typically an ISV or Integrator) provides a cloud-based enterprise solution such as invoice processing, medical records management, or customer account management. The partner’s software or line-of-business application integrates with Alaris APIs.
INfuse Management Software – INfuse Management Software provides easy end-user set-up, remote configuration and fleet management through a bi-directional API provided by Alaris. End users simply scan a smart set-up sheet provided by the partner and they are up and running with no training required, which slashes upfront and ongoing management costs.
INfuse AX Scanner – A smart network scanning device requiring no PC or software/drivers that accurately and securely transfers data, metadata and finished image files directly into a business process. INfuse offers enterprise-level security, including a separate data path and control path to isolate confidential content for secure transmission. The INfuse AX Scanner can be configured to carry the partner’s branding on its display.
The INfuse Solution seamlessly connects to the Alaris partner’s business process and enables end users to onboard content directly into that workflow. When a scan is successfully transmitted and form fields are validated, the end user receives real-time acknowledgement and immediate exception notifications. This means missing forms, signatures, and other critical information can be detected and corrected instantly, saving money and improving employee productivity.
“Exception handling and the opportunity for immediate corrective action is critical,” said Don Lofstrom, President & General Manager, Alaris, a Kodak Alaris business. “Reconstructing and re-scanning documents is difficult and costly. Bi-directional communication enabled by Alaris APIs is a game changer. It places INfuse in a category by itself – a smart, connected scanning solution with IoT capabilities for today’s information capture market.”
“The Alaris INfuse Solution presents a tremendous opportunity to deliver value to our clients,” said Paul Szemplinski, Founder & CEO, Integrated Document Technologies, Inc. (IDT). “It gives us a stronger solution set that will allow us to develop deeper relationships and become a different type of BPO. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen in our 26 years of doing business.”
New Scan Station offers powerful features, unlimited integration options
Also new from Alaris is the Kodak Scan Station 730EX Plus Scanner. The Scan Station 730EX Plus is an integrated network scanner that securely automates document capture and allows for fully finished files to be scanned directly into business processes. Like INfuse, the Scan Station is a network-connected solution that sits at the edge of workflows and operates in a wide range of customer environments. It offers embedded Windows 10 IOT Enterprise Operating System and network domain authentication for secure log-in.
The new Scan Station is ideal for capture and advanced processing such as OCR, all done in the scanner. It is specifically designed for integrators to create custom solutions. Partner applications can be loaded on the scanner, extending the capture solution to address the unique needs of the partner and end user. The Scan Station is well-suited for customer-facing environments where MFPs, peripheral scanners and PCs don’t make operational or financial sense.
Real world benefits of edge capture
Onboarding content is most efficiently done “at the edge” of an organization, in distributed locations and at the first possible touch point. Until now, the added cost of host PCs, provisioning and ongoing support has made edge capture cost prohibitive for many organizations and partners. As a solution provider, it’s difficult, complex and costly to install and remotely manage hundreds or thousands of scanners at customer sites. The latest wave of network-connected solutions from Alaris offer simplified remote installation, device management and updating.
The Alaris INfuse Smart Connected Scanning Solution and the Scan Station 730EX Plus Scanner can be deployed in a wide range of industries and applications including BPOs, service bureaus, healthcare, retail invoicing, insurance records, human resources, legal, tax consulting, and general office environments. To see what solution providers are saying about Alaris’ Smart Connected Scanning Solutions, please watch this video.
Optimizes User Experience and Provides Security with Comprehensive Visibility
A10 Networks(NYSE: ATEN) today announced a new Cloud Access Proxy (CAP) solution that provides secure access to software as a service (SaaS) applications, such as Microsoft Office 365, optimizing branch offices with better performance, stronger security and an enhanced user experience. Additionally, the solution provides full visibility into SaaS applications for improved security. The CAP solution is comprised of three components: the new A10 Networks Thunder® 840 CAP appliance for the branch office, higher-performance Thunder® Convergent Firewall (CFW) platforms for the headquarters, and the new centralized CAP Visibility and Analytics solution, which provides centralized insights into outbound application traffic and SaaS application usage. Together, the CAP solution ensures that access to SaaS applications and data is accelerated and secured while maintaining full, centralized visibility across sanctioned and unsanctioned applications.
SaaS and Multi-cloud Environments Increase Security Challenges
Traditionally, enterprise networks were designed to provide users with access to applications and services hosted locally within their data centers. To secure user access to the internet and to protect them from cyber threats, a large central security stack was typically hosted to inspect traffic going in and out of the network. As organizations grew and expanded into multiple branch offices, they were forced into a hub-and-spoke deployment model where all branch office traffic was routed back to the central security stack for policy enforcement and inspection.
With the increased adoption of SaaS applications, as well as the rapid move towards multi-cloud deployments, enterprise networks are changing with the consolidation of WAN edge infrastructure and migration from MPLS. Maintaining the security and user experience is increasingly challenging in this environment.
A10 Networks CAP solves these problems by consolidating different features of multiple point products, like software-defined-WAN, cloud access security brokers and secure web gateways, providing a unified solution for SaaS optimization, security and visibility. These features include:
Local breakout – For branch office traffic optimization using intelligent classification and bypassing of SaaS traffic from other application traffic.
Next hop load distribution (NHLD) – For dynamic traffic distribution across multiple WAN connections.
Tenant access control – For data theft prevention between sanctioned and unsanctioned SaaS tenant accounts.
URL filtering – For traffic categorization and protection from web threats.
Application visibility and control – For dynamic recognition and categorization, as well as filtering of application traffic.
IPsec VPN – For securing internet traffic, backhauled from branches to the central security stack.
AppCentric templates (ACT) – For simplified, one-step deployments at new branch offices.
CAP visibility and analytics solution – For visibility across sanctioned and unsanctioned application traffic at the branch office and in the cloud.
“Traditional enterprise networks are not optimized for SaaS application traffic and the security provided by the SaaS vendor is not adequate in addressing today’s cyber threats and increasing use of shadow IT,” said Yasir Liaqatullah, vice president of product management at A10 Networks. “A10 Networks’ Cloud Access Proxy is designed specifically to help organizations optimize the performance and security of their SaaS application traffic.”
The rapid increase in SaaS usage makes the Cloud Access Proxy solution perfect for deployment in small to medium enterprises (SME) and verticals like education, legal, finance and manufacturing.
Availability
The complete Cloud Access Proxy solution, including Thunder 840 Cloud Access Proxy, Thunder CFW, and the centralized Cloud Access Proxy Visibility and Analytics solution, is available now.
The centralized Cloud Access Proxy Visibility and Analytics solution will also be available as an add-on app on the A10 Harmony Controller® in early 2020.
Anker Innovations’ will be showcasing their new products at Gitex 2019 in Sheikh Maktoum Hall at Booth SM B1 from the 6th to the 10th of October 2019.
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