Aruba Invests in New State-of-the-art Customer Experience Offering

Aruba Networks, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (HPE), is now offering customers and partners tailored, first-hand experience of its solutions and technology through HPE’s first-ever Lighthouse Customer Experience Centre in South Africa. The Lighthouse, which is based at the company’s Johannesburg office, provides customised briefing sessions and highly personalised technology demonstrations.

“What makes the Centre different is that it’s virtual. Not only can customers see our solutions in action through tailored demo sessions, but members of the technical community are also able to try out new software and equipment, backed by the assistance of Aruba’s engineering team,” says Mandy Duncan, Aruba HPE Country Manager. 

She adds that the offering is fortuitously timed given the recent shift to remote work. “Our technical partners don’t need to go into a datacentre or even their offices to test new deployment strategies, because we now offer this as a service. They can sort out any teething issues before actually deploying in a customer environment, all while working from home.”

Customised demonstrations and user testing is available across a wide variety of solutions, ranging from hybrid cloud to intelligent data storage, insight and analytics and of course the experience edge, which is where the world now works and plays. In fact, Aruba is pioneering the use of machine learning and AI to provide the tools that enterprises need to drive adoption of edge technologies at scale, without compromising on network security.

A major drive behind these technologies is to advance the way people live and work, whether by redefining their experiences at the edge, helping them to unleash the full power of their data or accelerating their ability to innovate by harnessing cloud technology.

For example, one of the solutions that customers can explore through the Lighthouse is a smart digital workspace. “We’re seeing a lot of customers that have previously been office-based now shifting to a distributed model. This solution allows them to make that transition, while maintaining the same level of security and convenience as they would have experienced within an office space,” comments Duncan.

Another example of a model customers can come and experience is data storage. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75% of all enterprise-generated data will be created outside of a datacentre or the cloud. One of the biggest challenges most organisations face is figuring out where to store all that data securely. These are the types of models Aruba and HPE are producing.

“We’re incredibly excited about this investment, not only because it signifies the company’s commitment to the South African market, but also our commitment to the local channel, our customers and partners. The ability to showcase concepts like edge to cloud and hybrid cloud will go a long way to growing knowledge around these new technologies and how they can improve the way we live and work,” comments Duncan.