2013 will see the growth of WiFi in the enterprise environment, mobile roaming on WiFi for cellular subscribers and WiFi becoming just another RAN technology. This is according to Derick Roberts, CEO of wireless specialist, TruTeq Devices.
Roberts says as much as 57% of this year’s IT budgets will be spent on wireless communications, indicating “exactly where the market is heading”.
According to Michael Fletcher from Ruckus Wireless sub-Saharan Africa, 2012 was a great year for the WiFi industry, especially in the enterprise IT space. More businesses embraced the solutions WiFi had to offer
and in the process improved on their internal processes and services to their customers.
He pointed out that the growth of smartphones and tablets continued to dominate throughout the year, with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon becoming a central part of wireless solutions for increased mobility and productivity.
This, he says, resulted in vendors creating bigger and faster access points and pushing for controller-less solutions.
Commenting further TruTeq’s Roberts says that these wireless trends will continue for the rest of 2013, and into 2014.
“But other IT trends that will start emerging far more noticeably during this year will predominately be in the mobile and cloud computing space. Cloud computing is no longer just a word bandied about because it sounds fashionably. Companies are starting to look at it very seriously –and this interest is on a strong upwards spiral.”
Feedback received from Ruckus also claims that mobile device management, application management and location and file control will become key. Additionally, with the increased take-on of cloud computing by business, the focus will be on WiFi solutions that promote this technology.