The business landscape is marked by rapid innovation, disruption, and intense pressure on IT teams to accelerate digital transformation. As generative AI (GenAI) and natural language processing (NLP) reshape business expectations, the enterprise network emerges as a critical component for delivering data services and enabling technologies. Ensuring optimal network performance and health is important for business success and delivering exceptional user experiences.
AI-powered networking offers a transformative solution to address the growing complexity of networks and the evolving threat landscape. Advanced AI optimizes network performance for applications and users by enhancing and automating various tools and processes. Let's delve into the specific benefits that AI-powered networking can bring to your business.
Transforming Your Enterprise Network
Traditional IT operations are plagued by several challenges, including:
- A lack of collaboration between network and security teams
- Manual network service provisioning
- Limited visibility into user activity, application traffic, and connected devices
- An IT team overburdened with reactive monitoring, reporting, and troubleshooting (MRT), leaving them with less time for proactive improvements that could prevent problems in the first place.
GenAI and NLP are transforming business priorities by driving automation, enhancing security, and optimizing resource allocation. However, with the advent of new technologies, threats are still at large and constantly evolving. To address evolving threats and ensure compliance, a new strategy is crucial – one that embraces zero trust security.
Here’s where AI-powered networking comes in. It acts as a force multiplier for existing network tools, enabling continuous optimization that benefits both applications and users. More importantly for network administrators, AI automates complex IT processes and streamlines network operations (AIOps).
This frees network administrators from tedious tasks, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives and proactively hunt for threats. The outcome is a demonstrably secure and adaptable enterprise network architecture that empowers both networking and security teams.
The secure and versatile network services architecture created by AI-powered networking paves the way for a multitude of benefits:
1. Collaborative And Enhanced Productivity
For an enterprise network to function optimally, a common foundation for both network operations and security is crucial to ensure seamless user access while effectively addressing ever-evolving cyber threats.
Due to the challenges of the traditional approach to network management, we need a new way to orchestrate data securely, simply, and automatically – which is achieved through AI-powered networking. Here’s how this approach achieves superior network security and management:
- AIOps: Leveraging machine learning (ML) and NLP allows network and security teams to work together using common tools. These tools provide real-time insights and automate routine tasks, freeing up valuable IT resources to focus on strategic initiatives and comprehensive cybersecurity protection.
- Enhanced network performance and uptime: AI-powered networking optimizes network performance and uptime, minimizes disruptions, and ensures critical applications are always available.
- Network as an IoT hub: The network can be transformed into a secure and efficient hub for connecting and managing IoT devices. Compatibility with various protocols and third-party USB connections simplifies the integration of new on-site technologies.
- Greater visibility and control: Gaining deeper visibility into user behavior, application traffic, and connected devices empowers proactive security measures. This allows for the implementation of “deny-first” access controls based on zero-trust principles.
- Digital experience optimization: AI-powered network analytics can unlock valuable insights into user experience and network power consumption. This data can then be used to optimize network performance and user experience.
This shift towards a security-first, AI-powered network empowers your IT teams to be more collaborative, proactive, and efficient. It allows them to maintain and leverage the network as a platform for growth and innovation.
2. A Network Aligned With Business Goals
As your business evolves, its network requirements will too. Are you seeing a growing need to support clients with cutting-edge Wi-Fi technologies like 6GHz or high-bandwidth wired access like 10GbE? Perhaps you’re anticipating increased data demands that need further investment in your campus network and WAN infrastructure. Identifying these emerging needs is crucial for ensuring your network can continue to support your business goals.
To keep pace, organizations need enterprise network solutions that can deliver a consistent and reliable experience for businesses, IT teams, and end-users alike. This network should be intelligent and adaptable, capable of automatically optimizing performance and security.
HPE Aruba Networking Central is fit for the modern workplace as it offers a suite of enterprise network solutions designed to address these challenges and empower your line-of-business initiatives. These solutions leverage network automation, AI-powered networking, and AIOps to simplify network management, including:
- Unified infrastructure operations: Manage your entire network through a single platform, from Wi-Fi and switching to SD-WAN and VPN. This provides network-agnostic visibility and control, allowing easy integration of third-party services like IoT and security solutions.
- Rapid onboarding and deployment: Self-service registration and privacy-centric service availability simplify user onboarding. Cloud-based features like authentication, MPSK, Bonjour, and AirGroup further expedite deployment and reduce administrative burden.
- Automated configuration at scale: Leverage advanced features like NetEdit, port profiles, and cloud-native switch management to automate network changes with minimal disruption.
- AI-powered performance optimization and diagnostics: HPE Aruba Networking Central utilizes ML to continuously monitor and automatically adjust network configurations for optimal user experience, 24/7.
- User experience insights: Gain valuable insights into network and application performance through User Experience Insight (UXI) sensors deployed throughout your network. These sensors identify and aggregate anomalous user experience issues for faster remediation.
- NLP integration: Simplify network diagnostics with NLP-powered search functions within HPE Aruba Networking Central, enabling a more human-like approach to troubleshooting.
- IoT convergence: Easily integrate a wide range of IoT operational products and services with your existing IoT-optimized access point infrastructure.
- Carbon footprint management: Monitor power utilization, carbon emissions, and resource consumption to support corporate sustainability initiatives. Network Central generates environmental impact alerts and reports to provide clear visibility into your network’s ecological footprint.
Moreover, HPE Aruba Networking is offered as a network-as-a-service (NaaS) model. This subscription model delivers full enterprise network solutions on-demand to eliminate upfront costs. NaaS empowers your IT team with AIOps and network automation features like:
- AI-powered insights to optimize performance and prevent issues, ensuring a smooth user experience.
- Outsource the entire network lifecycle, from planning to end-of-life support. This guarantees an up-to-date, secure network.
- Flexible consumption options let you pay only for what you use, accelerating the mean time to value of your network investment.
NaaS offers agility and simplifies network operations, making it a strong contender for the future of enterprise network management. By leveraging HPE Aruba Networking’s solutions, you can build a scalable network that aligns with your evolving business goals. This, in turn, empowers line-of-business initiatives and delivers a consistently positive user experience.
3. Modern Security For Modern Threats
The rise of cloud-native applications, hybrid cloud strategies, and ever-changing compliance requirements necessitates a more granular approach to network security. HPE Aruba Networking simplifies security with a zero-trust approach, ensuring compliant and up-to-date network solutions.
- Unified policy orchestration with automation: Apply consistent security policies across WLAN, switching, and SD-WAN environments with global automation capabilities.
- AI-powered client insights: Proactively identify devices on your network using AI-powered analytics.
- Secure device onboarding and health checks: Ensure only authorized devices with healthy security postures access your network.
- Dynamic segmentation: Enforce least-privilege access controls based on user, application, client, and network context.
HPE Aruba Networking offers a comprehensive Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution that secures remote access to web applications, cloud services, and private applications. It includes ZTNA for granular access control, SWG for web threat protection, CASB for securing SaaS apps, and DEM for performance monitoring and troubleshooting.
HPE Aruba Networking empowers your enterprise network to confidently embrace the cloud while meeting today’s demanding security and compliance needs.
Final Thoughts
Imagine a future where you can deliver exceptional user experiences, accelerate technology adoption, and significantly reduce cyber risks, all with a network that adapts and anticipates your needs. AI-powered networking unlocks a unified infrastructure, empowering your business with a powerful combination of modern cloud-native security, intelligent automation, and flexible consumption. This drives greater efficiency, propelling you further into the digital age.
If you are envisioning the same for your business, our team of networking experts is ready to help you build a responsive network that fuels your digital success. Contact us today.
Next Steps: In our free tech brief, Achieve Agile Networking At The Edge, discover the challenges of deploying and managing network infrastructure. HPE GreenLake's Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solution simplifies this process by offering flexible, cloud-like networking services with on-premises control, eliminating significant upfront costs.
Overall, the tech brief highlights how HPE GreenLake for Networking enhances operational efficiency, security, and agility at the edge. Access the asset below.
