Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. company, and Pensando Systems Inc. are collaborating on a change in datacenter technology which recognizes that the flow of data traffic is shifting.

Data has traditionally flowed north-south, or in and out of a datacenter to other locations. Now that datacenter architecture has expanded to include cloud and edge technologies, more traffic flows east-west, or within a greatly expanded boundary.

HPE’s joint announcement with Pensando this week involves the deployment of the CX 10000, Aruba’s latest addition to its switch offerings, in combination with Pensando’s SmartNIC or programmable network adaptor technology, to help enterprises manage the new realities of an east-west flow.

“With microservices, more and more of the traffic is east-west, over 70% today and growing,” said David Hughes (pictured, right), chief product and technology officer of Aruba. “With the CX 10000, we’re giving enterprises a way to take the SmartNIC technology that’s been proven out by hyperscalers and introduce it into datacenters in a very cost-effective and easy-to-deploy way. We’re embedding that capability in a top-of-rack switch so we can apply firewalling services and load-balancing services to every port, to every flow.”

Hughes spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Aruba and Pensando Announce New Innovations event. He was joined by Soni Jiandani (pictured, left), co-founder of Pensando Systems Inc., and they discussed the extension of the new switch to edge environments and support for visibility and security in complex IT networks. (* Disclosure below.)

From datacenters to centers of data

The CX 10000 is designed to address enterprise needs in another segment of the modern IT infrastructure – the colocation or “colo” facility.

“We’re going to move from where people talk about datacenters to now talking about centers of data,” Hughes noted. “More and more those centers of data are going to be distributed around the edge, in colo environments. With the CX 10000, we can have it as a top-of-rack switch for that colo and deploy all of the encryption and firewalling services that the colo requires.”

An extended datacenter footprint can also mean more security risk. A key part of the newly announced Aruba-Pensando solution involves providing visibility into an expanded, complex environment.

“What I cannot see, I cannot secure,” Jiandani said. “If you look at 70% of the attacks that have been happening in the past few years, it’s the result of having an attack surface which is pretty large in datacenters. We have the ability to deliver visibility and telemetry at the same time we deliver stateful security, firewall and micro segmentation services.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Aruba and Pensando Announce New Innovations event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Aruba and Pensando Announce New Innovations” event. 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