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June 30, 2017

The Benefits of Controller-Free APs Driving Adoption Today

Late last Fall in a speech to investors, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins expressed confidence in the future success of the wireless market, despite his own organization’s 2 percent dip in revenue driven by declines in the traditional WiFi controller market.

When questioned, Robbins explained: “First of all, the market is transitioning to a controller-less architecture, so in large part, our access points were actually positive, but the controller side of that business was down.”

Now, figures from a recent market study are bearing out Robbins’ prediction. As it turns out, the worldwide wireless access point market is indeed poised to continue growing for the foreseeable future. In fact, the market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 7.8 percent from 2016 to 2020.

So what’s driving the adoption of controller-less APs today?

For small businesses, leveraging APs with built-in controllers provides a number of clear benefits. With a smaller pool of resources, procuring a physical controller would be like putting a Porsche engine into a Honda. It would be a costly investment for equipment that wouldn’t be able to work to its full potential.

APs with built-in controllers remove the need to procure costly equipment. Additionally, controller-less APs also reduce maintenance by giving you the ability to manage an entire system and configure settings from one interface—key for small organizations with limited IT capabilities.

In an enterprise setting, the business case for controller-free APs is clear as well. These are typically more dynamic settings with more moving parts than a small- or medium-sized business. As such, the seamless scalability of controller-less APs is appealing in an enterprise setting for a variety of reasons. With fast and easy provisioning, simple configuration and consolidated management from one interface, controller-free access points enables complex and dynamic wireless configurations to be handled smoothly. This opens the door for higher network performance and load balancing, more productivity, greater cost control and less maintenance-induced downtime. At an enterprise-scale, these benefits can be immense.

In the increasingly digital economy, security has become an integral element of basic business operations as well. Controller-less WiFi solutions provide organizations with failover and redundancy, key components for ensuring operational continuity in the event of a cybersecurity event. But because controller-less APs offer greater control and management, this added oversight itself can be useful for ensuring that personnel adhere to best practices when using their devices.

If recent reports from industry experts are any indication, controller-less access points are poised to revolutionize how businesses think about their networking strategies in the years to come.

To learn more, check out Grandstream Networks. As one of the first manufacturers to build WiFi APs with controller-less management, their high-quality solutions and years of experience make them an ideal starting place for any business leader looking to transform their wireless architecture today. 




Edited by Maurice Nagle


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