As the traditional worldwide enterprise wireless local area network (WLAN) market experiences relative maturation and the lofty gains of the past two years begin to flatten, the WLAN market for cloud-managed WiFi presents notable growth opportunities in both hardware and services.
According to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC), worldwide cloud-managed infrastructure and managed services revenue will reach $653-million in 2014 and $2,5-billion by 2018.
In recent years, cloud-managed WiFi growth has been fuelled by increased adoption in the midmarket and distributed enterprise (for example, retail or K-12 education).
“Enterprises are seeing the big picture and definitely considering cloud-managed WiFi for their remote sites when upgrading their networks,” says Rohit Mehra, vice-president: Network Infrastructure at IDC.
“These upgraded network architectures can accommodate unique needs around bring your own device (BYOD), scalability, application visibility and management.”
Today, having a strong, robust wireless network is mandatory for enterprises, and the proliferation of BYOD and mission-critical network applications has helped drive new wireless LAN deployments within a growing number of enterprise segments.
Cloud-managed WiFi, with its central manageability, smaller physical footprint, and linear scalability, is a viable option for these enterprises.
Additional findings from IDC’s research include the following:
* Leaner IT staffs are challenged with provisioning, troubleshooting, and maintaining more sophisticated networks.
* Cloud-managed WiFi belies the prevailing trend in enterprise IT of “everything as a service”.
* Vendors and channel partners are enabling simplified deployments through extensive managed services offerings.
* One of the most appealing benefits of cloud-managed WiFi is the ability to provide automated provisioning and configuration.
* Delivering the network over the cloud helps shift spending from capex to opex.