how enterprises can overcome the wi-fi challenge -...

1 © 2017 SevOne

How Enterprises Can Overcome the Wi-Fi Challenge[ eBook ]

How Enterprises Can Overcome the Wi-Fi Challenge

3 © 2017 SevOne

How Enterprises Can Overcome the Wi-Fi Challenge

The expectation is simple: Workers want to

be able to walk into the office and immediately

use their personal and professional phones,

laptops, and other Wi-Fi dependent devices.

They expect to be able to access the internet,

upload and download content, use cloud-based

apps, stream video and more.

Employees need to be able to work together

using video and screen share capabilities.

They expect that they can collaborate and work

seamlessly with any device to accomplish their

jobs. In fact, for most, this connectivity is not just

an expectation, but mission-critical. And they

want to do it all without having to plug into the

network with an Ethernet cord.

DELIVERING ON THAT CONNECTIVITY IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE.

4 © 2017 SevOne | How Enterprises Can Overcome the Wi-Fi Challenge

The Wi-Fi ChallengeEnterprises are already seeing employees complete more tasks from their smartphones, tablets, and laptops that were generally reserved for computers tethered to a desk with an Ethernet cord. After all, they can easily connect to the Wi-Fi at their local coffee shop, so why wouldn’t they have the same speed and reliability from the Wi-Fi at their office? And the truth is that if users can’t connect or have poor signal, it can contribute to decreased productivity and lower morale.

IT and Operations teams are now facing a significant challenge when it comes to providing sufficient Wi-Fi services. Newer generations of tech-nologies demand higher bandwidth, users have more devices to connect to the network, and the radio frequencies utilized by Wi-Fi continue to expand.

They need to deliver an optimal Wi-Fi user experience, and be able to monitor and manage it to proactively identify performance issues. They need end-to-end visibility of their environment, from wireless devices into the wireless infrastructure, through the campus network to the datacenter, and on to the cloud-based services and applications that enterprises rely upon to run their businesses. Unfortunately, many monitoring tools are disjointed, giving an incomplete picture of what’s going on.

This e-book will explore the growing demand for Wi-Fi services and the challenges teams face as they strive to offer the experience their users expect. It will also provide advice for overcoming those challenges to deliver a superior user experience.


Enterprise Adoption of Wi-Fi continues to growA robust Wi-Fi network is the expectation in the workplace these days. The enterprise worldwide wireless local area network (WLAN) market segments increased 3.1% year over year in Q416 and 7.2% for all of 2016, reaching $5.4 billion, according to IDC.

Furthermore, the 802.11ac standard now accounts for 65.6% of dependent access point unit shipments and 80.9% of dependent access point revenues, according to IDC’s data.

For the full year 2016, the 802.11ac standard accounted for 63.4% of dependent AP shipments and 78.9% of revenues.

The enterprise WLAN geographic region to experience the largest growth was Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, which increased 21.7% in 2016. Other standouts include Egypt increasing 94.9% year over year and Norway growing 30.8% year over year, per IDC’s findings.

$5.4B

21.7%

63.4%


Need for Wi-Fi connectivity and

experience of wire-like speeds

Rising data traffic resulting in network

capacity issues

Growing proliferation of

enterprise mobility and BYOD trends

Proliferation of 802.11ac based

WLANs

Looking forward, the market research firm Technavio forecasts that the global WLAN market will see a compound annual growth rate of over 14 percent from 2016 through 2020. There are several reasons for this growth. Market research firm Global Industry Analysts cites a series of drivers, including:


The Need for Constant ConnectivityAs the WLAN and Wi-Fi markets continue to grow, teams are tasked with managing their networks and delivering a superior experience. But Wi-Fi networks have built-in management challenges. They include:

Wi-Fi connections run at half-duplex

This simply means communication can go both ways on the network, but

information can only travel one way at a time, similar to walkie-talkies. The

very nature of this setup can slow down performance, especially with more

users and increasing bandwidth needs.

Accommodating digital transformation

More businesses are evolving their offerings to compete in an era of digital

transformation, and enterprises are upgrading and refreshing their Wi-Fi

offerings to make it easier for teams to work seamlessly. But larger networks

mean more to monitor.

More bandwidth demand

Video conferencing has become commonplace in the office, along with

streaming music and video, uploading and downloading content, and using

cloud-based apps for day-to-day tasks. Many of these offerings weren’t nearly

as common when Ethernet cords were the standard, but teams today are

expected to deliver an even better experience with more to manage.

Multi-vendor, multi-technology infrastructure resources

As teams upgrade and refresh their offerings, they’re often adding different

vendors and technologies to their stacks. It can be difficult to get a unified

view of performance across the entire environment, leaving them cobbling

together disparate reports from separate tools.

Expanding Wi-Fi frequencies

Additional bandwidth can never hurt but teams must now incorporate

more bands into their management strategies and ensure visibility across

their entire environment.

Security challenges

As users connect to Wi-Fi networks across more devices at a faster clip,

Operations teams need to balance the need for connectivity with the need for

security. They require visibility into what’s happening across the network so

that if an issue occurs, they can understand what’s happening and why in real

time. That way, if there is a breach, the appropriate teams can be notified.

How to Assure Enterprise Wi-FiOffice employees will no longer tolerate plugging in with an Ethernet cord to start their work day. Teams need to offer reliable, robust Wi-Fi services that encompass entire campuses, not just specific departments or geographic locations.In order to assure performance, IT and Operations teams need end-to-end visibility of their Wi-Fi infrastructures to proactively react to issues and avoid service-impacting events. They must be able to know what’s happening in real time, as well as what caused it and where. They also require insight into their Wi-Fi infrastructures’ overall capacity and performance in order to plan ahead and ensure they keep up with users’ performance expectations.

But too often traditional network management tools fail to cover Wi-Fi infrastructure components at the network’s edge. The monitoring tools that Wi-Fi vendors offer typically are optimized only for their own equipment, giving an incomplete view. And any tools that providers offer with their equipment only monitor their specific offering and aren’t easily integrated with those from other vendors.


About SevOne.SevOne provides the world’s largest CSPs, MSPs and Enterprises with the most comprehensive technology portfolio to collect, analyze and visualize network & infrastructure performance data to deliver actionable insights to compete and win in the connected world. SevOne serves organizations that are looking to complex, dynamic next-generation infrastructure such as software defined networks, orchestrated containers and cloud technologies to support their business goals.

[ www.sevone.com | blog.sevone.com | [email protected] ] SEV_EB_04_2017

The SevOne Enterprise Wi-Fi Monitoring Solution provides complete and unified visibility into the entire network infrastructure, including the Wi-Fi elements. The Solution gives enterprise teams the insights and actionable intelligence they need to consistently meet their users’ high Wi-Fi expectations.

DOWNLOAD OUR ENTERPRISE WI-FI MONITORING SOLUTION GUIDE TO SEE HOW THE SEVONE SOLUTION ENABLES NETWORK OPERATIONS AND ENGINEERING TEAMS TO ASSURE THEIR WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE—FROM THE ACCESS POINTS AND WIRELESS CONTROLLERS TO THE ENTERPRISE CAMPUS NETWORK, INTO THE CORPORATE DATA CENTER, AND ON TO THE CLOUD.

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