Aruba has announced Aruba SD-WAN support and integration with Amazon Web Services’s (AWS) new AWS Cloud WAN, an innovative cloud networking service introduced today at AWS. This new solution will enable Aruba customers to use the policy-based framework of AWS Cloud WAN to create advanced WAN topologies with integrated network segmentation that aligns seamlessly with the Aruba SD-WAN fabric. Now, all the advantages of network segmentation at the edge – in the LAN and WAN – can be extended from headquarters and branches across the AWS cloud.
As organizations increasingly utilize the cloud to host their business applications, they want the most flexible and modern SD-WAN solution that lets them achieve the highest return on cloud investments through better economics, control, reliability, and performance. Of equal importance, these organizations want to leverage cloud infrastructures like the AWS global network to build more flexible and secure enterprise WANs.
With this latest development, Aruba now supports the widest range of integrations with AWS, making Aruba SD-WAN the cloud onramp of choice for cloud-first enterprises. This year marks the third year in a row that Aruba has been a launch affiliate for new AWS network services. In 2020, Aruba announced support for AWS Transit Gateway Connect and in 2019, Aruba launched API-based automation with AWS Transit Gateway Network Manager.
Aruba’s SD-WAN solutions, an integral part of Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), provide enterprises with a sophisticated, flexible on-ramp to AWS network services, allowing users to easily integrate their SD-WAN with a wide range of hybrid and multi-cloud services. Aruba’s integration with AWS Cloud WAN provides complete support for cloud connectivity use cases which extend LAN/WAN network segmentation and traffic isolation from the edge to and through the AWS global backbone network.
The benefits of LAN/WAN segmentation with AWS Cloud WAN include:
- Improved network security from edge to cloud: Easily segmenting users, devices, applications, and WAN services into secure end-to-end zones in compliance with predefined security policies, regulatory mandates, and business intent provides consistent security policies and automated enforcement across the enterprise. Fine-grained LAN segmentation is translated to course-grained, VRF-like private network segments that extend across the AWS Cloud WAN.
- Faster spin-up of new branch sites and Cloud VPCs: The integrated solution, combined with the new “one-click” EdgeConnect VPC instantiation, automates network deployments, removing the complexity associated with manual, step-by-step configuration of the SD-WAN (IPSec tunnels, segmentation, route tables, and VRFs) with the common AWS Core Network Policy, which can be time-consuming and error-prone.
Organizations can now extend policy-based network segmentation from the branch edge – which spans the campus, branch, microbranch, and remote worker solutions – into the AWS global network. Aruba SD-WAN integration with AWS Cloud WAN is enabled through Aruba Orchestrator and Aruba Central, making it easy to deploy, manage, and operate sophisticated WAN networks over AWS. Aruba Orchestrator now also supports automated “one-click” deployment of EdgeConnect SD-WAN instances directly into AWS VPC’s. This new automation capability is seamlessly integrated with EdgeConnect’s zero-touch provisioning workflow, and further simplifies the deployment and commissioning process for solutions using Cloud WAN.
“This latest integration with AWS Cloud WAN changes the game for enterprises looking to maximize flexibility and reduce operational complexity while strengthening security posture within their cloud-centric WAN deployments,” says David Hughes, chief product and technology officer at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Integrations like these play an important role within Aruba ESP by enabling edge-to-cloud security for organizations as they adopt a Zero Trust SASE approach, while maximizing choice and flexibility as they implement their cloud strategy.”
The new Aruba SD-WAN solution with AWS Cloud WAN will be previewed at AWS, with general availability anticipated in 2022.
