DMR: [Looking around] It becomes very apparent from the workspace that this new emerging market is very different from what network equipment manufacturers used to do: I see extreme programming – buddy programming –, I see an open workspace with long tables, no cubicles, lots of toys lying around, lots of IT and hardware, everyone is very enthusiastic, programmers huddling together – this is mayhem and rapid development in the best possible sense. It is very, very, software centric. How does Aruba Networks – coming from the hardware and controller side – deal with this change as an organization? 

Paul Curto: I think Aruba started out as a company that was focused on both hardware and software from the beginning. As we move forward in the market, there is still kind of an equal focus on coming out with new hardware, with new platforms, with new products that meet certain market needs, as well as optimizing software and continuing to add new features. It’s always really been kind of a hybrid approach. There needs to be a focus on hardware to be able to accelerate new platforms to market, while at the same time there has to be a focus on software to be able to leverage the innovation we already have and then attack new markets in build, new ecosystems, as we continue to expand our product portfolio.

DMR: It sounds like your software centricity enables you to innovate much faster and roll out new features much faster. I recently read about Aruba’s high quality voice and jitter-free streaming video. Configuring that with 2,000 access points was before nearly impossible, business-wise, because you had to touch every single base station. 

Paul Curto: We have a program called “Network Rightsizing” where we basically look at our existing customer revenue prospect and say “Mr. Customer, let us help you figure out what percentage of your edge switch ports are actually being utilized today.” And it could be anywhere from “You deployed four ports in every office, in every cubicle, and only two are being effectively even connected to something, two are just sitting there, idle, nothing connected in”… Well, you could have some users connected into the switch, but they’re only surfing the web and doing some e-mails. What you find is, as you do an analysis of your network core utilization, that there are a substantial percentage of ports that are either not being utilized at all or highly underutilized. You could consolidate all of the ports that are actually lit and being utilized into fewer switches and then take the users who are light users – who are running mission critical applications but are not necessarily that bandwidth intensive – and start migrating those user groups to primary wireless access. Then you take the savings you are already spending on closet refresh for your switches as well as savings from spending on your maintenance as well as your maintenance fees that you pay on your switches – and deploy a pervasive Wi-Fi network across your campus for those primary users. For example, at Liberty University a 15 HD-television channel deployment, pervasively across the campus. That same network is being used for voice using Cisco’s IP Office. Then, of course, they have the data network for the students and the faculty. So that same Wi-Fi network is being used for a pervasive voice, video, and data deployment across the campus.