Slocum Dickson Medical Group Delivers Secure Mobility for Physicians, Staff and Patients with Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks

Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) today announced that Slocum Dickson Medical Group, P.L.L.C., a leading provider of patient-centered, physician-directed, quality care based in upstate New York, has replaced its Cisco wired and wireless network with an Aruba Mobility-Defined Network. The new Aruba infrastructure will allow Slocum Dickson to connect the increasing influx of Wi-Fi-enabled medical devices to their network, enable doctors and staff to provision and use personal devices, and provide secure guest access for the 2,500 patients the provider sees daily.

Slocum Dickson Medical Group employs approximately 70 physicians and 500 staff including medical assistants, many of whom work in both the provider’s main facility as well as its two satellite locations. The organization’s IT group had previously deployed a Cisco wired and wireless network across its three locations, but it was challenged with meeting bandwidth demands due to the increasing number of new Wi-Fi-enabled devices coming onto the network. In addition, consistent with Aruba’s recent #GenMobilefindings, Slocum Dickson’s physicians and staff, as well as patients and guests, expect to use their personal mobile devices anytime and anywhere. The existing Cisco network was unable to deliver the kind of secure, easy-to-manage Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) connectivity that Slocum Dickson required.

“We have a lot of physicians using iPads and we found that the process for getting them connected was cumbersome with our Cisco solution,” said Charles Spinelli, Director of IT for Slocum Dickson Medical Group. “Our employees had to bring their devices into IT to have them configured, taking up valuable time for our doctors and staff, as well as the IT department.”

To address its growing needs, Slocum Dickson determined that a network and security upgrade was in order. After a thorough evaluation of solutions from Cisco, Extreme Networks and HP, and with help from channel partner, CDW, the organization selected Aruba Networks to provide a Mobility-Defined Network. The new network incorporates Aruba AP-225 802.11ac access points and mobility controllers, Aruba Instant controller-less access points, Aruba mobility switches, the AirWave Network Management System and ClearPass Network Access System.

With the new Aruba network in place, Spinelli says his IT department has immediately benefited from easier, centralized management, while the business has been rewarded with a faster, more secure and reliable network; the latter, he noted, has a direct impact on enabling physicians to provide better patient care and services. ClearPass, in particular, now allows physicians to simply bring their device into any of the three Slocum Dickson facilities where it is quickly authenticated so they can have immediate access to all of the information and resources they need – including patient data – just as if they were connecting with a corporate-issued device.

“The process is so much easier now,” said Spinelli. “We don’t need a dedicated Cisco engineer to define policies on our network. Our employees can very quickly and easily on-board their own devices.”

While simplicity and ease were key, Spinelli noted that security is the provider’s “number one priority”, so ClearPass’ ability to connect the myriad of personal devices securely was crucial to Slocum Dickson’s decision to choose Aruba. The centralized management afforded by Aruba AirWave, as well as the availability of Aruba’s 802.11ac solution were also important factors in their decision.

“Because we are only able to upgrade our network every five to seven years, future proofing is crucial,” Spinelli added. “With the Aruba 802.11ac infrastructure, we feel we’ve accomplished that.”

“Slocum Dickson is really a textbook example of what is happening in so many organizations, across a wide variety of industries, today,” said Jeff Dolce, Area Vice President, Aruba Networks. “These organizations are finding ways to answer the needs of both their #GenMobile employees and customers who want secure and easy connectivity for the mobile device of their choice, while meeting the objectives of the organization which, in this case, include ironclad security, ease of management and of course, the bottom line – improved patient care and services. Slocum Dickson demonstrates why more healthcare providers and organizations of all types are turning to Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks.”

About Aruba Networks, Inc.

Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company designs and delivers Mobility-Defined Networks that empower IT departments and #GenMobile, a new generation of tech-savvy users who rely on their mobile devices for every aspect of work and personal communication. To create a mobility experience that #GenMobile and IT can rely upon, Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks™ automate infrastructure-wide performance optimization and trigger security actions that used to require manual IT intervention. The results are dramatically improved productivity and lower operational costs.

Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products visit Airheads Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com.

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