Aruba Networks, Inc., in wireless LANs and secure unified mobility solutions, and Riverbed Technology, Inc., in wide-area data services (WDS), announced a joint solution that allows mobile and remote users to achieve LAN-like access to data and applications wherever they work or roam. The joint solution also establishes a new productivity and real-time collaboration model for remote offices by offering untethered wireless connectivity without compromising network security or application performance.

Industry estimates suggest that 67 percent of employees work outside of company headquarters, and according to IDC the number of mobile workers is expected to rise to over 1 billion by 2011. Geographic and technical hurdles have made it difficult for remote workers to collaborate globally and productively. Building out IT infrastructure at remote offices to replicate the corporate headquarters experience is not a viable option for most enterprises because of the significant costs, administrative overhead, and potential data loss associated with current alternatives.

"CIOs with mobile and remote workforces face a real dilemma delivering application performance to mobile workers across long distances, while simultaneously consolidating infrastructure to improve data security, management and TCO," said Joe Skorupa, research vice president at Gartner. "The solution must deliver LAN-like performance to remote users while keeping infrastructure costs in check."

Aruba's Remote Access Points enable mobile workers, road warriors, and disaster-recovery teams to work remotely by transparently establishing a link to primary or back-up enterprise data centers and then enforcing identity-based access to authorized applications. The Riverbed award-winning WDS solutions accelerate applications and data for remote offices and mobile workers across wide area networks (WANs), while Riverbed Steelhead Mobile Client delivers LAN-like application performance to all employees, regardless of location. The combination of these Aruba and Riverbed technologies reliably delivers the enterprise experience to remote users, without compromising speed or incurring the limitations of VPN and managed clients.

"Bringing the enterprise experience to mobile workers reduces travel costs, lowers hydrocarbon emissions, and enhances productivity by bringing the network to the point of use," said Andrew Harding, Aruba's head of business development. "A typical 45 mile commute wastes time that could otherwise be productively employed, and generates about 5.5 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually. Companies that want a competitive advantage must avoid wasting resources -- intellectual and natural -- and the best way to accomplish that is by providing unfettered access to enterprise applications from everywhere a worker might roam."

"This plug-and-play mobile worker and remote office solution from Aruba and Riverbed will help our joint customers truly realize the benefits of a consolidated IT infrastructure," said Venugopal Pai, senior director, alliances at Riverbed. "With fewer remote office build-outs and less remote infrastructure to manage, administrative overhead decreases and services can be delivered from a centralized and secure computing model. CIOs can cut costs and complexity with virtually no degradation in application delivery speed to remote and mobile knowledge workers."