Empowering Partner Success: Driving Growth With HPE Aruba Networking’s SSE

Kena Johnson The workplace has evolved with more and more users adopting the hybrid work model. HPE Aruba Networking is accelerating the transition to the modern workplace with its Security Service Edge platform, also known as SSE. I’m Kena Johnson from The Channel Company, and I’m joined by John Spiegel from HPE Aruba Networking to talk about how SSE is securing the hybrid workplace. Glad to have you with me! Kena Johnson Glad to have you with me, John. John Spiegel Hey, Kena. It's great to be here. Kena Johnson John, we've been mentioning SSE. What is SSE and why is it needed in the workplace? John Spiegel Kena, that's a great question because there's a lot of confusion around this framework, SSE, and the larger framework called SASE. What it's really about is delivering an application. That's, at the end of the day, what SSE looks to do. If we kind of take the calendar back several years, what was networking all about? It's about delivering packets, doing it in a performant way. Security was an afterthought because our applications, they lived in the data center. But with the advent of cloud, now we have data resident in all four corners of the planet, and applications are delivered in a SaaS model. So what is needed now is networking with security, and that is what really, at the end of the day, what SSE looks to do. Kena Johnson As you said, yes, SSE does bring networking with security, but what sets it apart really? John Spiegel I'll talk in the perspective of HPE Aruba networking because there's so many vendors out in the space, and trying to differentiate between what vendor X versus vendor Y versus what we do here at HPE Aruba Networking can sometimes be difficult. We take the perspective, and we came to the marketplace in that 2018 timeframe after the advent of cloud, after the advent of Zero Trust. And those are the two bets that we have made for the future. So when we built our product, we started with Zero Trust as the foundation, and then we built that on top of the cloud giants' AWS, Azure, Google Cloud. And as a result, we're in a position where we believe that everything else that you hear about in the SSE space SWG, CASB, DLP, even Digital Experience Monitoring is really a feature that you build on top of that Zero Trust foundation. So what does HPE Aruba Networking really provide you? At the end of the day, it's that opportunity to get a jump on this Zero Trust transition that companies are partaking in. That's really where we see the differentiator Kena Johnson A lot of great features for partners, but how can they help them grow their businesses? John Spiegel Great question, again. We're at a point where we're transitioning, very similar if you hearken back to the days of virtualization. What happened was storage. This software-defined revolution is now finally coming to the networking space, and that's where I see the opportunity. The TAM, as I understand it, is north of $30 billion, showing incredible opportunity. And what is needed from the channel is that guru, that guy to really help companies understand the space and help them also transition to this SSE and SASE. It's going to be an incredible time. The future of bringing together a converged network and security solution is here, and HPE Aruba networking, we're at the forefront of it. Kena Johnson Exciting time. John, thank you so much for joining me here today. John Spiegel Thank you for your time. Kena Johnson If you’d like to learn more about HPE Aruba Networking, visit arubanetworks.com/sse. For The Channel Company, I’m Kena Johnson.