Work from anywhere with a wireless edge

Cradlepoint has launched its E102 Series Enterprise Routers to support the growth and commitment of Cradlepoint to the work-from-anywhere EMEA market, by providing organisations with the performance and capabilities to meet the connectivity, security and IT management demands of today’s distributed employee market.

Specifically designed for work-from-anywhere use cases leveraging LTE cellular connectivity, the new E102 wireless edge router accommodates international certifications and standards. It features a next-generation, fast LTE cellular modem (CAT7), that  doubles the downlink speeds for added performance and triples the uplink speeds to support applications such as videoconferencing. The E102 is available to order in mid-November.

The Cradlepoint E102 Enterprise Router:

• 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 with complete control over security, availability, and management as well as device access and traffic usage.

• Emphasise 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, 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 organisations the ease of management that they need at a global scale.”

The Era of Work from Anywhere

Fluctuating pandemic conditions have delayed return-to-office dates and is giving rise to a hybrid work environments. In fact with the number of employees working from home more than quadrupled during the pandemic, 50% of IT organisations expect that this remote work population will remain permanently expanded,1 according to enterprise Management Associates (EMA). And the stress on networks will continue to grow. For example, EMA also found 95% of network operations report that WFH 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 and users to performance challenges. Only by providing a dedicated, IT-controlled wireless connection to the home – which is easily done through cellular – can organisations 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 established network segmentation and security to protect these new architectures."

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 a dedicated WAN and Wi-Fi networks isolates work devices such as laptops and printers to meet security and compliance policies. Organisations can uphold company-wide security standards and extend this protection to all connected company assets.

The Cradlepoint E102 Enterprise Router provide simple, IT-centric management, enabling 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.”