Aruba is entering the mobile-device-management fray with its own offering. However, Aruba claims its platform is cheaper and easier to deploy than others on the market.
Yet another
company is stepping into the mobile-device-management arena to help
organizations make sense of the influx of employee-owned devices into the
corporate environment.
Aruba
ClearPass is designed to simplify and automate the process of securely
provisioning mobile devices onto an enterprise network, Aruba Networks said
Feb. 21. The ClearPass Policy Manager software provides administrators with a
set of modules to handle provisioning, asset inventory, security and management.
The Policy
Manager consists of a core application and four separately licensed modules
that customers can choose from. Onboard is a self-service mobile-provisioning
portal for employees to register their own devices. Profiler creates a detailed
inventory of each device. OnGuard is a network access control application that
can quarantine compromised devices to prevent infecting the rest of the network
and also remove the infection. The final module, Guest, allows organizations to
register temporary visitors and grant them guess access on the network. Aruba
also introduced a cloud service, ClearPass QuickConnect, to automatically
configure wired and wireless network settings for personal devices.
The bring-your-own-device
(BYOD) phenomenon is changing the network infrastructure, and IT departments
have to keep up, Robert Fenstermacher, director of product marketing at Aruba,
said in an interview.
Many mobile-device-management
platforms typically don't address provisioning or controlling the device's
network access, said Fenstermacher. IT administrators use Policy Manager to set
a range of standard policies for devices based on device type, operating system
version, user groups and other characteristics.
When a user
registers a personal device, these predefined rules identify the device type
and apply appropriate policies, such as using a VPN client, installing Exchange
ActiveSync and downloading digital certificates. Certain types of devices may
be given limited access, or senior executives may have extra privileges.
Administrators can later tweak the device individually if additional policies
are necessary.
Registered
devices have a unique ID, which gives IT staff some control. If there is a
problem, IT can immediately revoke access to that identifier without impacting
other systems.
ClearPass
Policy Manager relies heavily on technology Aruba acquired in 2011. The heart
of the Policy Manager software comes from Avenda Systems mobile-management
software, which Aruba acquired in December. Guest access and management
capabilities are based on Amigopod technology, which was acquired December
2010.
Customers can
buy ClearPass Policy Manager preloaded on a server appliance or as a VMware
virtual machine instance. It can support the major operating systems in the
enterprise, including Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Research in Motion's
BlackBerry OS, Apple's OS X and Microsoft's Windows 7. It will be available in
March, and pricing will vary with the total number of users and devices, Aruba
said.
Aruba sees
ClearPass being used in a variety of settings, including the health
care sector. In a hospital environment, medical professionals can be issued
tablets to securely access the applications via VPNs over a WiFi or 3G network
and be able to get access to information while making their rounds.
Aruba's
Fenstermacher claims ClearPass can save customers up to 76 percent over other
platforms that require IT teams to replace existing infrastructure. In fact,
organizations would likely spend 50 percent less on a Aruba ClearPass
deployment than with a comparable Cisco Identity Services Engine
implementation, Fenstermacher said.
ClearPass
comes with FreeRADIUS, open-source software for authentication, authorization
and accounting, but Policy Manager can also be used with existing
authentication infrastructure.
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