Guaranteeing WLAN Performance: Meru Rolls Out Service Assurance Program

Buying an enterprise-class WLAN usually boils down to guessing at the number of APs required (whether, BTW, one does a site survey or not), working up a budget, and then negotiating the best price and fixing the inevitable missteps in the production deployment with more APs and assorted configurational changes. Needless to say, customers would like a little more determinism in this process, especially as WLANs become the norm in mission-critical settings, multi-application environments, and especially as WLANs become the primary or default access for just about anyone with a mobile PC. WLANs just need to work - from day one.

This is why I found Meru Network's new Service Assurance Program [1] so intriguing. I hate to say this, but too many WLAN vendors (usually resellers) make money off of the uncertainty that's prevailed to date. Site survey? Sure - even though the results reveal very little about the operational environment. More services to deal with the challenge of configuring a productive system are usually acceptable, but all to often these come after the sale and after installation, when poking around finally reveals the errors in the planning process. By then, though, it's too late - user productivity, what we really need to optimize for, is being lost. The up-front work required must be done early - that's why they call it up front - and not deferred until later.

Meru's announcement [2] of a structured methodology for service assurance comes with three bold claims - 99.99% uptime (wow!), solutions with up to 30% fewer APs required (wow again!), and WLAN voice services with landline quality (wow - OK, you get the idea). So instead of vague promises of "it'll be great", here we have a program with quantifiable goals and a guaranty. Of course, all of this builds upon features Meru has included in their product offering, so I'm sure any risk for the company is minimal. But they are regardless to be commended by providing a focus on and a solution for an element of the WLAN planning and buildout process that hasn't received the attention it requires and deserves.