HPE Aruba Donates $50 Million in Connectivity to Fight COVID-19

The News: With the global spread of COVID-19 affecting our communities, colleagues, partners and customers, we are focused on doing everything we can to help those in need. Hospitals, healthcare facilities and first responders are on the front lines of this epic battle, and their ability to maximize impact is contingent on their ability to maintain and scale their operations through expanded infrastructure and secure network connectivity.

That’s why HPE Aruba is responding to the increased need for temporary healthcare sites for the triaging, testing and treatment of COVID-19 patients by donating $50 million in secure connectivity kits for the immediate provisioning of pop-up clinics, testing sites and temporary hospital facilities in the US, Canada, UK and European Union. Read the full release for more info on the news.

Analyst Take: It has been really heartening to see the tech community continue to step up its efforts to put technology and financial resources into fighting COVID-19. From Zoom stepping up early to offer free video to connect business and people when the virus first hit China to the significant contributions being made by companies like Intel, Cisco and IBM,  I continue to be impressed. This has been one of the most difficult times in our history and the tech community has shown an impressive amount of strength and solidarity–I hope to see this continue.

Add to the list HPE, which has a number of ongoing initiatives to fight COVID-19 and one of them is around helping the healthcare system up their wireless network quality, density and volume through a significant donation of resources. Knowing that we are going to see a volume of makeshift medical facilities, connectivity is going to be key and HPE’s Aruba networking equipment is well positioned to offer the type of quick setup, security and quality that these facilities will need.

HPE Aruba Also Sends Volunteer Network Engineers

While equipment itself is helpful, the deployment and configuration of network equipment requires a certain amount of know how.  To support the deployment requirements of the company’s donated assets, HPE Aruba created the Airheads Volunteer Corps, (Click to get more info or volunteer) which is a self-identified global registry of volunteer network engineers that have volunteered to assist in the build-out of network infrastructures for medical facilities on the front lines of dealing with this pandemic.

I believe this was a critical addition to the equipment as these networks need to be properly deployed and configured so the deployments from hospitals to field medical pop-ups are able secured and usable for critical communications transmission.

Overall Thoughts on HPE Aruba’s COVID-19 Efforts

I intent to continue to point out when companies are putting their best foot forward to offer critical resources during these difficult times. What makes me happiest is seeing companies taking these critical actions with little to no marketing or expected benefit. These are the times where companies, much like people are giving because it is exactly what the world needs. Good stuff HPE.

Futurum Research provides industry research and analysis. These columns are for educational purposes only and should not be considered in any way investment advice.

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Image Credit: HPE

The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.