In welcoming Dirk Gates, chairman, CEO and co-founder of high-performance wireless networking firm Xirrus, to the TMC newsroom in Las Vegas during Interop 2012, TMC CEO Rich Tehrani reminded the executive that some four years ago he had talked about a Wi-Fi vision.
The TMC chief was eager to know how far we have come from those days. “We have come a long way,” replied Gates.
“I had a wireless vision more than 20 years ago when I started Xircom,” Gates added. “I was ahead of my time. Today, wireless mobility is a reality.”
Gates also told Tehrani that last year alone, with the expansion of tablets, Wi-Fi has become important and its performance absolutely matters.
“So with this vision, we started the company Xirrus, which is all about building Wi-Fi infrastructure that could scale and perform with a large number of devices and deliver the capacity,” asserted Gates. “It’s nice to see this vision become a reality today.”
Furthermore, he added, tablet explosion has taken us to a point where “I need to have high-performance Wi-Fi everywhere in my enterprise.”
To give organizations 360-degree wireless access to the Internet, Xirrus Wi-Fi arrays contain multiple radios that send high-gain signals to create a powerful indoor Wi-Fi tower like the cell-tower. Unlike traditional one-radio Wi-Fi devices inside the home or office, Xirrus arrays are between eight and 16 times more powerful and contain up to 16 Wi-Fi radios.
Talking about the growth of Wi-Fi, Gates said that last year education was the only vertical that cared about Wi-Fi. Today, the whole world has moved to tablets and smartphones and has the same need for high-performance Wi-Fi, affirmed Gates.
Tehrani was next interested in knowing about Xirrus’ ability to scale to massive amount of users. Gates replied that considering a typical University campus today, where the average number of Wi-Fi devices per student is three or more, Xirrus can and was covering the entire Interop 2012 in Las Vegas with 25 devices, where each offers eight access points.
“It is simple and quicker to install,” he said.
Unlike others, “we offer enterprise grade Wi-Fi solution that delivers 8 times more bandwidth and capacity at 5 GHz. That is why we can do these large events so well,” stated Gates.
The CEO, in turn, emphasized that “Xirrus has the most scalable Wi-Fi product line in existence today.”
See the whole MobilityTechzone video interview below.
The conversation also confronted international sales, technology advancement and a roadmap for the future of related industries.
Tehrani concluded the interview by asking what’s next for the company. Gates quickly responded that the company is expanding outside education into other verticals and partnering to acquire complementary technologies.
Edited by
Braden Becker 
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