As an enterprise wireless specialist, Aruba Networks is a vendor whose bread and butter is mobility. CEO Dominic Orr told us how Aruba's exponential growth in the last few years has been directly driven by the proliferation of BYOD in the workplace.

Since the first wave of tablets entered the consumer market, the company has geared up to take on the challenge of solving the security and connectivity issues around the BYOD network, and has positioned itself to be ahead of the curve in anticipating the enormous opportunities mobility will bring.

Orr explains the fundamental differences between the employees of the pre-mobility workplace and what Aruba identifies as 'GenMobile'- the newest generation who will overturn the enterprise as we know it. The 'anytime, anywhere' way they work and conduct their lives creates a fluid data environment that IT will be forced to adapt to if they want their companies to survive. 

Thanks to GenMobile, says Orr, the traditional work environment with centralised security will soon be a thing of the past. Aruba's vision is to help companies move away from the port-centric approach, to a user-centric and location-based mobile networking model that has security built in.

Aruba has learnt first hand the competitive advantage that the mobile-ready enterprise can bring through trialing these technologies within its own walls. Switching completely to mobile apps as a training platform, for instance, has transformed the way Aruba's employees around the world share knowledge.

Orr believes his company is well placed for the next big trend to impact the network – the era of wearables and internet of things. Fundamentally, the world full of wirelessly connected IP addresses will require another level of intelligence around wireless network access and security monitoring, and those that up their game in preparation for this will forge the way for the connected enterprise. 

The bigger picture is that everything we thought we knew about networks and IT is changing, says Orr, and vendors and their customers will need to take a more creative approach than ever before.