For most students and faculty, school is out for the summer, but it’s coming back in the fall. And that will bring a whole new level of logistical complexity as institutions of learning grapple with safety concerns during the global pandemic.

Technology providers such as Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, are addressing this challenge through focus on areas such as the intelligent edge — secure, simple and smart networking for wired or wireless connectivity solutions.

“If you have 100 students sign up for a class, physically in the classroom they only want to have 30 students and the other 70 could be on-campus, but they are all dialed in remotely online,” said Partha Narasimhan (pictured), chief technology officer at Aruba. “The intelligent edge includes networking and security, but it really focuses on people and business stakeholders. A lot of these workflows and interesting use cases that directly address the intelligent edge are going to become important.”

Narasimhan spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover Virtual Experience event. They discussed Aruba’s latest edge-services offering and its future application in a post-COVID-19 world. (* Disclosure below.)

Solutions with a sixth sense

Aruba is extending its vision of the intelligent edge through the launch of a new offering called the Edge Services Platform. The goal of Aruba’s latest solution is to resolve problems at the network edge through artificial intelligence and cloud-native technologies.

“We really believe we are building solutions that have a sixth sense,” Narasimhan said. “That degree of focus on data-driven AI operations was a key in us coining the term Edge Services Platform. It’s addressing not just connect and protect, but also analyze and act.”

The delivery of Aruba’s latest offering comes at a time when edge services have grown in significance as a result of changed work environments for many people. And there is a belief that many people forced to work remotely will continue to do so after many firms have reopened.

“We define the edge as where people are and where the action is,” Narasimhan said. “Over the last two or three months, a lot of that has been in peoples’ homes. When the pandemic goes out of our lives, it doesn’t look like we’re going back to where we were in January or February.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover Virtual Experience event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the HPE Discover Virtual Experience. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE