We're seeing more and more evidence that enterprise-class wireless-LAN system vendors are using management capabilities to define key differences with the competition. It's usually thought that advantages in RF performance primarily serve that role - WLANs have their roots, after all, in the fundamental draw of the black art of radio. And, sure, meaningful differences in both RF (PHY) and upper-layer performance can be realized and often measured, and even sometimes provide product differentiation and advantage. But it's often very, very difficult to quantify these differences, given the non-linear, statistical nature of radio propagation itself, rapidly-changing and similarly statistical and non-linear RF environments and traffic mixes and loads, and even the core architectural strategies employed by the vendors, which, interestingly again, are still all over the map. Here we are, 20 years into the wireless-LAN revolution, and we have more enterprise-class players with more distinct technologies and strategies than ever. Such shouldn't be the case - wired Ethernet at this point, while still evolving through the standards process, was essentially commoditized.
But one strategy that I like, and that is achieving prominence today, is the use of management software to really define a given product. And, as I've said before, management capabilities are critical because the best way to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) is to minimize operating expense (OpEx), and the best way to minimize OpEx is to have more useful features in the system's management console. Troubleshooting is labor-intensive, and the skilled labor required here is expensive. Recall that Motorola's AirDefense unit started down the advanced troubleshooting path just a short time ago, and now the floodgates are opening.
Two recent announcements really drive this point home. The always-innovative Meru Networks this week announced a clever addition to their E(z)RF management arsenal in the form of a decidedly sleuthy approach to fixing problems which they call "Forensic Troubleshooting". This capability provides a sophisticated mechanism for rolling back the state of the system for detailed, inference-based analysis of specific conditions. While this isn't a substitute for the more traditional triggers and alerts/alarms of specific events, the often-complex nature of operational wireless challenges makes this approach more than intriguing, especially for anyone who's spent hours trying to figure out what happened yesterday when they're devoting all of their time and attention to running the network today.
Similarly, Aruba networks announced additions to their multi-vendor Airwave platform with the 6.3 release. Enhancements to setup and configuration capabilities are here at last (an area we found lacking in our review last year), and there's additional integration, also most welcome, with the Network Chemistry functionality also acquired by Aruba some time ago. And, very interestingly, both Aruba and Meru support access to the management console via an iPhone (and BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and other browser-equipped handsets in Aruba's case). The Web is really the only console that matters, regardless of application, and the iPhone is the only handset that - oh, wait, maybe we'll save that for next time. For now, look to management consoles becoming more robust, more integrated with wired networks (unified management), and more accessible in the future. The WLAN vendor that gets this right will be one of those left standing when the shakeout/consolidation does occur, which it will, eventually.
Mathias is a principal at Farpoint Group, a wireless advisory firm in Ashland, Mass.
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