Wednesday, 14 September 2011

The need to bolster enterprise wireless LANs is evident as smartphones and tablets begin flooding businesses, and end users and employees access higher-speed Wi-Fi instead of incurring data charges on their devices.

Recent numbers from IDC reveal that WLAN market revenues grew nearly $725 million in the second quarter, up 43.4 percent from the first quarter.

"Enterprise mobility has emerged as one of the key priorities for CIOs and IT managers across all geographies, and the growth of WLAN market revenues during the second quarter is a clear testament to that market dynamic," Rohit Mehra, director of enterprise communications infrastructure at IDC, said in a statement. "The tremendous momentum behind smart mobile devices and their continued uptake in the enterprise for business and vertical-specific applications are driving enterprises to move forward with upgrades and extensions of their wireless networks."

As such, it's clear that IT folks are now becoming wireless network operators. They have to engineer a network that identifies and authenticates devices, identify and prioritize applications and throw more capacity when needed.

Wi-Fi scaling and provisioning tools appear to be the next wave of the enterprise WLAN market. Meru Networks, for instance, made a move last week by acquiring Identity Networks, which offers secure guest and device access management. With the acquisition, Meru is expected to enable customers to provide secure, policy-based wired and wireless network access for guests and employees that bring their own devices into the enterprise.

I expect to see a number of products and services coming in the next several months to address yet another challenge posed by the proliferation of the smartphone.