Arista Delivers Cognitive Campus Edge for Enterprise Workspaces

Arista Networks (NYSE:ANET) today announced unified edge innovations across wired and wireless networks for its Cognitive Campus portfolio. The Cognitive Campus is the next-generation, analytics-driven approach to delivering advanced security, visibility, and location-based services while optimizing the client to cloud experience. The new solutions will help enterprises simplify and secure their operational experiences across evolving enterprise workspaces and the proliferation of IoT (Internet of Things).

"Enterprise campus networks are a dynamic place with a mix of remote workspaces, IoT devices and myriad high-bandwidth, low-latency applications. Enterprises can benefit from advanced management systems that stretch across the wireless and wired networks that leverage AI-based analytics, secured access, real-time telemetry, and common wired and wireless dashboards to provide client-to-cloud visibility," said Brandon Butler, IDC Senior Research Analyst, Enterprise Networks. "Arista's Cognitive Campus combines architecture, infrastructure and software management tools to support the modern needs of today's business."

Arista addresses the unified edge with a series of new capabilities across wired and wireless networks, including a simplified architecture, new wired and wireless visibility tools, new WiFi 6 access points, enhancements for remote teleworkers, a contact-tracing application, and secured access integrations.

Arista's Cognitive AI-Driven Architecture

The next-generation campus, connecting end-users and IoT devices to the data center and cloud-based applications, brings focus to the enterprise network edge. Coupled with the explosive growth of various IoT devices, the campus network edge must handle additional demands across both wired and wireless networks. Enterprises require a new type of management architecture for this unified edge that provides a consistent view of wired and wireless with granular, real-time, comprehensive datasets, driving insightful recommendations to the operator.

CloudVision® is built based on an enhanced, cognitive AI-driven approach to network inference and analytics. Pioneered by Arista, cognitive NetDB is a state-based, cloud-hosted, network-wide database that collects real-time, streaming data using standards-based APIs, providing an approach that is dramatically more powerful than traditional network management systems. Cognitive NetDB® leverages advanced AI and machine learning techniques across wired and wireless data for proactive fault resolution, secured workflows, and visibility across IoT, users (remote, branch, and campus), and endpoints.

CloudVision for Cognitive Unified Edge

This cognitive NetDB architecture helps drive insightful analytics across application quality of experience, predictive network assurance, and secure operations, including the following new CloudVision capabilities:

• Anomaly Detection across time-series data, including predictive alerting for events such as application reachability, resource utilization, and device state monitoring.
• Compliance Dashboard provides a proactive risk assessment of the wired and now wireless infrastructure by automatically identifying known security vulnerabilities and software defects and their potential impact across the network estate.
• Arista P-Tracer helps identify a user's location over a given period of time, providing critical information necessary for today's COVID era for contact tracing. In addition, Arista is partnering with leading location-based services vendors to bring:
  • Tracking of smart devices, including phones, watches, laptops, and tablets.
  • Healthcare asset tracking system integrations for analysis and reporting of the proximity of patients, staff, visitors, and location of critical healthcare assets.

Endpoint to Edge Networking with IoTvision

The two main challenges of managing modern campus networks at scale are ensuring a high quality of experience across all connected devices and quickly detecting and tracking down issues that arise. This means understanding which devices are on the wired and wireless network, what they're doing, and whether they're properly segmented.

To address this, CloudVision is introducing IoTvisiontm, a purpose-built dashboard that provides a summarized assessment of endpoint experience. IoTvision is designed to address the modern campus, bringing user and endpoint device details together in a simplified view for common monitoring and troubleshooting across wired and wireless. IoTvision collects critical endpoint information in an easy-to-read, single view, providing the operator with a consolidated view of endpoint inventory, device type, connection status, traffic patterns, and quality of experience across endpoints connected to both the wired and the wireless network.

Secure Access for the COVID Era

The Arista Remote Access Point solution empowers enterprise customers with the ability to extend the Unified Edge to new mobile remote workplaces such as a teleworkers' home office, temporary workspaces, or a remote branch office. This includes working with leading security and network access control vendors to provide seamless access to corporate resources and applications. New benefits include:

• Investment Protection - Integrates seamlessly with installed security infrastructure from Palo Alto Networks, Checkpoint, and other third-party firewall vendors, eliminating the need for separate controllers and management infrastructure.
• Single Sign-on Access - Arista's new integration with Okta's SSO infrastructure delivers a single sign-on for both network access and applications, simplifying security administration and end-user access management.
• Aruba ClearPass Integration - Natively integrates with Aruba ClearPass to enable dynamic, role-based access control for seamless security enforcement and response across Arista wired and wireless networks.
• Forescout eyeSight Integration - Arista and Forescout provide automated security posture assessment, compliance and remediation, discovery and classification of workstations, laptops, printers, cameras, and other IoT devices.

New Access WiFi 6 Access Points

Arista also introduces two new WiFi 6 access points with cost points and feature sets ideal for critical enterprise high-density WiFi deployments in indoor and outdoor environments. These access points are orderable and shipping now.

• C-230/E
  • An enterprise-grade, 6-stream Wi-Fi 6 AP with dual concurrent 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz band radios with ceiling and wall mount options and support for both internal and external antennas.
• O-235/E
  • A ruggedized enterprise-grade, outdoor 6-stream Wi-Fi 6 AP with dual concurrent 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz band radios, including support for both external and internal antennas.

Availability

The Unified Edge suite of cognitive capabilities will be generally available for all customers starting in Q4 2020 as part of their CloudVision software subscription.

Register here to learn more about Arista's Cognitive Campus Workspaces at our webinar on October 29, 2020 with our partners.

Read more about this announcement on Jayshree Ullal's blog here.

Learn more about Arista's Cognitive Cloud Networking portfolio here.

About Arista Networks

Arista Networks is an industry leader in cognitive cloud networking solutions for large data center and campus environments. Arista's award-winning platforms deliver availability, agility, automation analytics, and security through CloudVision® and Arista EOS®, an advanced network operating system. For more information, visit www.arista.com.

ARISTA, CloudVision, and CloudEOS are among the registered and unregistered trademarks of Arista Networks, Inc. in jurisdictions around the world. Other company names or product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Additional information and resources can be found at www.arista.com. This press release contains forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, statements regarding cost savings, performance, reliability, security and efficiency. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, including rapid technological and market change, customer requirements and industry standards, as well as other risks stated in our filings with the SEC available on Arista's website at www.arista.com and the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Arista disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.