Work From Anywhere: Cradlepoint Unveils Enhanced Wireless Edge Solutions to Relieve the IT Burden of a Growing Global Remote Workforce

• E100 and E102 Series Enterprise Routers Deliver Centralized Management and Enterprise-Class Network Security

Cradlepoint, the global leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions, announced updates to its E100 Series Enterprise Routers to provide organizations, worldwide, with the performance and capabilities to meet the connectivity, security and IT management demands of today’s work-from-anywhere world.

Cradlepoint designed its E100 Series Enterprise Routers specifically for work-from-anywhere use cases leveraging LTE cellular connectivity. The upgraded E100 wireless edge router includes a faster LTE cellular modem (CAT7) that has double the downlink speeds for added performance and triple the uplink speeds to support applications such as video conferencing. The E100 began shipping to the U.S. and Canada this month. To further support the company’s commitment to global expansion, the new E102 wireless edge router is designed to accommodate international certifications and standards. It features the same, faster LTE modem as the E100 and launches in mid-November.

The Cradlepoint E100 Series Enterprise Routers:

• Offer a scalable, easy-to-manage solution that can extend to thousands of remote workers at any location and can manage these new user populations with limited-to-no incremental staff.
• Provide IT organizations with complete control over security, availability, and management as well as device access and traffic usage.
• Emphasize network standards and interoperability to insert easily into existing networks.

“We are seeing the first wave of work from home solutions fail to address the long-term security, performance and IT extensibility requirements,” said Donna Johnson, senior vice president of product and solution marketing at Cradlepoint. “Unlike traditional remote access solutions, Cradlepoint ensures a connection that is fully isolated from the user’s unsecure and uncontrolled home network, while providing organizations the ease of management that they need at a global scale.”

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The Era of Work from Anywhere

Fluctuating pandemic conditions have delayed return-to-office dates and are giving rise to hybrid work environments. The number of employees working from home more than quadrupled during the pandemic and 50% of IT organizations expect that this remote work population will remain permanently expanded,¹ according to Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). As a result, the stress on networks will continue to grow. For example, EMA also found 95% of network operations report that work-from-home has led to an increase in real-time communications application traffic (voice, video, online meetings) on their networks². As a result, IT staff need to provide a network infrastructure to support work-from-home and work-from-anywhere on a more permanent basis, and for many, do it with the same staff and resources they have today.

More immediate solutions to tackle this challenge have provided limited results. For example, VPN client solutions on laptops often can be used at the discretion of the employee which doesn’t sufficiently protect corporate networks and assets. And solutions relying on an employee’s home network introduce real security risks and may have uneven performance with critical applications due to sharing the network with bandwidth-intensive home traffic, like streaming and gaming services. Additionally, IT lacks the visibility and control they need to ensure security and performance, and to troubleshoot work-from-home related problems. Even SD-WAN is not a good option, in most cases, because it does not address the shared home network problem.

Without a dedicated wireless connection, companies also face a lack of segmentation between work and home traffic that opens enterprises up to security risks while users face performance challenges. Only by providing a dedicated, IT-controlled wireless connection to the home – which is easily done through cellular can organizations address these inherent risks and ensure cost-effective IT support for remote workers.

“Working from home introduces new security risks,” said Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research, network management at EMA. “Users are now accessing data and applications from home that were once only accessed behind a security perimeter. Network and security teams have less control at this new user edge. They need to implement a new security architecture and need to secure remote connectivity in new and different ways. Cradlepoint’s wireless WAN solutions with their NetCloud Manager cloud-based management establishes network segmentation and security to protect these new architectures.”

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Enter Cradlepoint: The Solution for a Work From Anywhere Future

Using a dedicated wireless WAN connection, Cradlepoint can extend secure connectivity to the employee home with the same IT capabilities and end-user experience as the office network.

Cradlepoint NetCloud establishes and controls the security policies through the router, meaning the VPN connections no longer are at the discretion of the end-user. Flexible options support different office and cloud access and security models, including corporate VPN extension, direct internet access, and a hybrid of the two. Using dedicated WAN and Wi-Fi networks isolates work devices such as laptops and printers to meet security and compliance policies. Organizations can uphold company-wide security standards and extend this protection to all connected company assets.

Both the Cradlepoint E100 and E102 Enterprise Routers provide simple, IT-centric management, enabled with a cloud-based management platform – NetCloud Manager — to monitor, control, and troubleshoot wireless edge routers in employees’ homes. Policies can also be instituted to support traffic shaping and better performance for applications. Additionally, zero-touch deployments ease installations as pre-configured routers with pre-activated SIMs installed can be shipped to the home for easy setup.

“The Denali team is excited to partner with Cradlepoint in supporting our global customers as they adapt to the future of work-from-anywhere,” said Clayton Daffron, director of solution architecture at Denali Advanced Integration, which delivers enterprise IT solutions and services. “The scalability of the Cradlepoint E100 series aligns with our capabilities in global supply-chain. It enables us to provide our enterprise customers with the end-user experience they need to empower a distributed workforce.”

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