The explosion of wireless technology and mobile devices in the early aughts has been nothing short of transformative for both the business and consumer sides of the market. As tech undergoes another digital renaissance around virtualization, machine learning and the “internet of things,” businesses that can offer next-level optimization of wireless infrastructure are becoming indispensable across industries.

“Back in 2002 … I asked why [customers] were not adopting Wi-Fi. They said, ‘It’s not secure; it doesn’t have the performance I need; it’s not manageable … it’s not ready for enterprise.’ … I took that as a challenge,” said Keerti Melkote (pictured), co-founder and general manager of Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. Through Aruba, Melkote provides enterprises mobility solutions to help them deploy next-generation mobile networks that enable better connections both internally and with their customers.

Melkote spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event in Austin, Texas. They discussed how Aruba is planning to usher the market into a new digital age of edge computing. (* Disclosure below.)

The future of business is IT

At the start, Aruba offered a fundamentally disruptive notion to customers: Get rid of all the wires. “My business was about unplugging and still staying connected,” Melkote said. That business began to take off with the explosion in popularity of the iPad.

“When employees bring their own devices, there’s no security model to connect them into the enterprise, so we allowed them to connect over wireless,” he said. As Wi-Fi became more pervasive and companies began looking for ways to reduce their post-recession budgets, Aruba began to see greater demand for its wireless networking solutions.

With wireless now a staple in business, Aruba is looking ahead to IoT optimization. “There’s a lot of conversation as part of HPE around the data center and what’s happening there with hybrid information technology. The intelligent edge is the complement of that,” Melkote said.

Aruba is working to create more efficient processes in offices, customer integrations in brick-and-mortar retail stores, and procedures in industrial companies. By bringing online experiential elements into tactile experiences, Aruba is enabling engagement at a higher level for businesses and consumers, Melkote explained.

“To do all of that you need to crunch the data, you need to have super fast networking to engage the customer, and all that needs to happen in real time. That’s what the edge is about,” he said.

Looking ahead, Aruba is looking to tackle the issue of wireless security. “We are talking about … how to provide advanced machine learning and behavioral analytics capabilities to give advanced warning about security threats that may be already inside the enterprise. … We’re helping them figure that out,” Melkote said.

Optimizing processes and protection around wireless is key to the function of any future business, according to Melkote. “I don’t see in the future any business that is going to be independent of IT,” he concluded.

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE