Aruba Networks this week extended the reach of its wireless network platform into the realm of mobile applications management and deployment.
The company today launched Aruba Workspace, an extension of the company’s ClearPass Management system for managing Aruba wireless networks that encompasses the mobile devices and applications attached to a wireless network.
According to Robert Fenstermacher, director of product and solutions marketing for Aruba, IT organizations are increasingly tasking specific individuals with the management of the mobile computing experience. To make that simpler, Fenstermacher makes it possible to not only control the attributes of the wireless network, but also the applications and devices attached to it using a management platform that combines network access control, mobile device management and mobile application management.
That level of control, says Fenstermacher, extends out to not only which devices and applications can access network resources, but also the location from which they can do it. In addition, IT managers can choose to throttle network bandwidth allocation for specific applications that may be hogging corporate resources, says Fenstermacher. The end result, he notes, is not just the ability to personalize the mobile computing experience for an end user, but also to prioritize who gets access to which resources and when.
As mobile computing continues to take on a more strategic role in the enterprise, IT organizations are looking for ways to unify the management of all things mobile. That means reducing the total cost of mobile computing by eliminating the need for separate management frameworks for wireless networks, devices and applications, says Fenstermacher.
With more end users starting to think of mobile computing devices as their primary vehicle for accessing applications, the way enterprise IT needs to be managed in the age of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon is fundamentally changing.
 Rather than selecting a wireless network vendor based solely on the performance attributes of the network it provides, Aruba is making the case that the time has come to also consider which vendors make it easiest to manage a mobile computing experience that by any measure is becoming more mission critical with each passing day.
