Unlocking the full potential of WiFi inside your ABW strategy
Pete Murray
Helping clients illuminate their data assets for compliance, discovery, or security needs
So you are thinking of going ABW or Agile working and are considering WiFi-only as your network (which was the challenge I posed to our team).
My company is in the networking business, and have been for three decades. We were here when Cisco arrived in Australia! So we know a bit about networking.
We are NOT going WiFi only. We are optimising our cabled/WiFi network (software defined) to ensure a common and consistent experience on both networks that is seamless to the end user.
One of the reasons you can’t go WiFi only is that;
- it is an unlicensed spectrum, what that means is that it is contended. It also means that when radar starts, WiFi stops, and we are moving to Darling Harbour.
- there is limited quality of service on WiFi. Even though we are going Apple/Cisco due to their unique partnership on WiFi, it’s still not ideal to run SAP for example over WiFi!
- location based services are still not quite there on WiFi, to enable you to find someone but more importantly, allocate a desk accurately. We are going Cisco with an option for HALO (Hyper Accurate Location).
- DR is a problem with WiFi. Not easy or practical to run two of them
We have hidden the wires and used a cool docking station so it doesn’t look like it is wired. So I am happy.
It felt weird that as a specialist network provider, who can make anything happen for our clients, that we couldn’t justify to ourselves going WiFi only. So I guess if we couldn’t justify it, as the market leader in this space, you should perhaps think twice about your WiFi v wired strategy.