It Doesn't Need To Be This Hard

Author's Note: September 7th 2016 : I originally wrote this article whilst running the Xclaim "simplified enterprise Wi-Fi" product line at Ruckus Wireless. Since then the world of Big Data has beckoned. However, if ever there was an industry where the premise of the article below resonated - Big Data is that industry! When success is predicated on successfully piecing together countless exceedingly complex open-source software frameworks and tools - that success quickly becomes a pipe-dream for all except those organizations with their own highly skilled big data engineering teams, or very deep pockets to pay 3rd party consultants and integrators. That's why we created Galactic Exchange......but more on that another time. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the article.......

Things just seem to get more complicated and more expensive. Despite all the fancy universal remotes and life-style tools, it is definitely more difficult to turn on a TV and change channels than it used to be! My wife, like my mother, hands the control to me or our eldest son and provides her TV instructions verbally (now that's real voice-control technology!). How many of you have ever gone to a friend's house and not been able to turn on the TV?

The same is true for technology in general. As we make "progress", stuff just seems to get harder to do and we pay more for the pleasure to boot. The reality is that many of us crave simplicity. There is a great beauty in something that does something well and in a manner which is intuitive and does not cost the earth. In fact people will actually pay more for "beautiful simplicity" - Apple products, love 'em or hate 'em, are a case in point.

But we are a vain lot. We have to have the best that our money can buy at whatever level we find ourselves. I remember the first CD player I ever purchased. It was 1986 and I had just won what was then, especially for me as a 21 year old engineering student, a large sum of cash. ￡750 to be exact, after a 25-1 moon shot ante-post bet on what turned out to be the winner of The Derby (the top UK horse race). It was run on the last day of my college final exams too....life doesn't get much better.....but I digress. With the post-exam social season bearing down on me like a freight train, I wanted to make sure I spent the money - or a good portion of it - on something that would last. CDs were just arriving on the scene so I researched the best CD players available and spent about ￡500 on a top-notch Philips model (I cannot comment on the subsequent whereabouts of the other ￡250!).

This CD player - it was brimming with features....stuff that I knew was going to be absolutely"critical" to the enjoyment of my music. So I took it home and it was truly great......except......I never did use any of those advanced features. Other than on/off, open/close, play/pause, and forward/rewind....these in fact were the critical functions and I simply did not need anything else.

When I read recently that a Sony survey of Digital SLR (DSLR) camera owners showed that nearly 70% of them had only ever used those cameras in fully-automatic mode (i.e. "point-and-click"), I realized I was not alone. The reality is that many of us do need, and will take advantage of, advanced features in products. But just as many of us will not, and the great news is that we do not need to if the "point-and-click" version offers excellent results anyway.

And so I bring you, with that tortuous introduction, to the world of Enterprise Wi-Fi. I have had the honor and privilege of working at Ruckus Wireless for nearly 10 years. A market leader and innovator in Wi-Fi technology, Ruckus has a reputation for delivering the best RF technology in the industry. I am somewhat biased of course, but that reputation is well deserved. No-one, and I mean no-one, makes radios as good as Ruckus, mostly thanks to the multi-patented Beamflex "smart antenna" technology embedded inside each Zoneflex Access Point.

But smart antennas notwithstanding, the world of enterprise Wi-Fi generally has followed a similar path to that of the home automation and DSLR camera world. The stuff has become exceedingly complex. And just as a professional photographer can leverage all those manual options on a DSLR to take a better picture than you or I can take with a point-and-click camera, an organization with the right level of IT Staff can leverage all those complex Enterprise Wi-Fi features to build a better Wi-Fi network. The problem is when those companies do not have an IT Staff that can take advantage of those features - in fact they might not have an IT Staff at all. So until now the choice is to be like my Mom, and live with a product that you really have no clue how to use without outside help, or buy a product which is incredibly basic instead (Consumer grade Wi-Fi for your business anyone?).

A gap has appeared in the market and there is a requirement for a "Goldilocks" product to fill that gap. Something not too simple that it misses those critical features but not too complex that it creates more problems than it solves for companies without the right level of IT staff. Something that is just right. So we have taken a bet and built the Xclaim product line to serve that currently under-served market. We launched the AP hardware a few months ago and today we announced our CloudManager service to compliment it, and in the spirit of making things both beautiful and simple, the service is totally free. So now when you want to build a Wi-Fi network for your business you have a real choice. If you want the very best, including very advanced and sophisticated functionality, you can choose a high-end enterprise vendor and of course the Zoneflex line from Ruckus should be top of that list (and no-one else has Beamflex smart antennas btw!). If by contrast you simply want great quality, no nonsense Wi-Fi that is a breeze to deploy and operate (and with FREE cloud management!) and you have a modest budget - well seek no more. Something reliable, simple and less expensive is here. Now that really is progress!