Louis Helmbold, Senior Technical Consultant, HP ProCurve Middle East, talks about some of the key trends in enterprise mobility in the region. He expressed his observations regarding the market exclusively with Faiz Askari — Head Online& Features Network World Middle East
What is the potential of mobility computing in Middle East region?
Mobility computing is on the increase worldwide, and the Middle East is no exception. We are seeing an increased adoption, especially in the hospitality sector.
How do you foresee the importance of securing enterprise mobility?
All our products are secured via WPA / AES / 802.1x etc. And we offer centralized authentication mechanisms. Security is therefore an important and a standard on all our implementations.
What are the priorities of Middle East CIOs when it comes to the secured access of their application while being on-the-go? What market trends have you observed in the Secured Mobility space?
Quite simply, having a have high speed secured authenticated tunnel back to the corporate network.
Regarding trends, Wi-Fi is now being more commonly used for VoIP, and that throws open lot of security issues. Wireless eavesdropping on unsecured VoIP sessions is a worry for enterprise managers. Today's mobile phones also use Wi-Fi and can be integrated with VoIP.
While setting up a mobile network for an enterprise organization, what are the common security challenges that occur in such implementation?
Higher security vs. lower performance, is an aspect which usually keeps the network managers and system administrators worried. ProCurve has a unique set of product to balance this out. This gives an edge over others.
What are the unique attractions of HP Procurve's offerings in this space? How do you get differentiated from the competition?
We have an integrated wireless edge services module in our switches controlling thin access point from a central console including network self healing. If centralized authentication is implemented on the wired network the it will also be seamless on the wireless network.
What market positioning does HP Procurve is looking forward to achieve in the Middle East region? Similarly, what future prospects would you predict for this market?
We want to position us in the leadership position. Since our product portfolio is robust and comprehensive we are confident of achieving this position in the market.
Massive growth on the area as everyone wants to be connected to the corporate network at all time even if they or on vacation in Dubai! 802.11n will play an important role here
