SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aerohive Networks®, a leader in controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-managed mobile networking for the enterprise market, today announced the launch of a public education campaign to highlight the ramifications of controllers on enterprise IT departments. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the impact of controllers on IT costs, user experience and complexity in order to educate enterprises looking to deploy WLANs in response to exploding demand for mobility and the new 802.11ac standard.
News Facts
- Aerohive’s “Controllers are Dead” campaign highlights both technical limitations and operational issues controllers impose on IT departments that can cost millions in capital and operational expenses when businesses need to address current and future mobility demands with past Wi-Fi solutions. This includes migrating to 802.11ac.
- Aerohive has deployed controller-less access points (APs) in over 13,000 enterprise customer networks, preparing them for seamless future growth with the scalability, security, and simplicity they need. Customers can either use 802.11ac today or easily migrate in the future to the new standard and any future WLAN technology.
- According to an Infonetics Research report on December 2, 2013 titled “Wireless LAN Equipment and WiFi Phones Quarterly Worldwide and Regional Market Share, Size, and Forecasts: 3Q13,” there will be 46.5M “interactive” access points (meaning either controller-dependent or controller-less yet cooperative) shipped from 2014 to 2016; that is 150% of the total number of APs which Infonetics reported vendors had shipped in the previous 8 years. Infonetics attributes the drastic increase in the shipment of APs to the expected rapid adoption of 802.11ac starting in 2014 and 2015. This makes Aerohive’s education campaign critically important to enterprises hoping to implement 802.11ac without over-building and overspending on their networks.
- The benefits of eliminating controllers extends beyond just IT savings and provides real environmental impacts as well. In 2013, Aerohive shipped its 500,000th AP which, based on a typical AP-to-controller ratio since 2006, would have saved the world from an estimated 19,808 controller devices. The impact of eliminating even that small number is startling. Between controller and hardware costs, this could have saved businesses around $184,000,000.
- Aerohive will be hosting a special online event next Thursday, February 27th from 10:00am PT to 10:30am PT to commemorate the contributions of controllers during their life and discuss how organizations can move forward without them. To register for this event go to http://controllerless.com.
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Other elements of Aerohive’s Public Education Campaign will include:
- An independent study of the economic impact of a controller-based enterprise Wi-Fi network along with tools to understand potential savings from a controller-less network system.
- A whitepaper titled “The Network Impact of 802.11ac” that provides network design considerations for those looking to build high-speed Wi-Fi. The paper discusses the history of legacy WLAN controller architectures and highlights their limitations, including increasing complexity, limiting scalability and exponentially increasing costs.
- Test reports by an independent testing firm detailing the limitations of controller-based Wi-Fi and its effects on device importance.
- Community “Birds-of-a-Feather” discussions on using controller-less Wi-Fi for 802.11ac within Aerohive’s HiveNation online community.
Comments
Excerpt from Averitt Express case study on Aerohive implementation
“When that controller failed (as part of a demo with another WLAN provider) and the network failed, the Wi-Fi network was down. I knew that a controller-based solution wasn’t for us,” said Angie Tellmann, networking services, Averitt Express. “Our goal is to have 100% network uptime, which allows downtime only for maintenance.”
Excerpt from Gulf Coast Health Care case study on Aerohive implementation
“I like the intelligence that is on each Aerohive AP, which makes setup and management much easier for me and my team. We didn’t want to have to put a controller at every single site,” said Jon Dossey, IT Director, Gulf Coast Health Care. “Plus I didn’t want to backhaul the traffic all the way through the LAN and WAN.”
Excerpt from Madeleine Fashions press release on Aerohive implementation
“The benefits of Aerohive’s architecture were clear,” said Manuel Eder, team leader networks and IT at Madeleine Fashions. “It was an easy decision where cost, scalability and ease of administration and management were key for us. Having to implement two controllers for failover was not an option, especially when we didn’t in fact need a controller at all. With Aerohive, we have the platform to scale our wireless network without breaking the bank, and with the added benefit of eliminating single points of failure.”
“The mobility revolution is threatening to break legacy Wi-Fi networks, and it’s only just begun,” said David Greene, chief marketing officer, Aerohive Networks. “This education campaign is our effort to help IT organizations find a better way to get to a simpler, more secure, more scalable future. It’s time to say ‘no’ to more controllers – wherever they may live.”
About Aerohive Networks
Aerohive was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. The company’s investors include Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) and Northern Light Venture Capital. For more information, please visit www.aerohive.com, call us at 408-510-6100, follow us on Twitter @Aerohive, subscribe to our blog, join our community or become a fan on our Facebook page.
“Aerohive” is a registered trademark of Aerohive Networks, Inc. All product and company names used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
