I know this entire blog is wishful thinking at this point in time, but…here goes anyway.

Think Vista vs. OSX.  Just by reading the title, you know what I’m saying…  (BTW, Mr. Jobs, feel free to send me a 13″ MacBook Pro, loaded to the gills, for the free marketing).

Is it just me, or is anyone else sick to death of all of the complexities of enterprise Wi-Fi?  I’ve been in this market since…well…before it was really a market, and it’s always been the same old story: more functionality means more complexity…and that functionality just keeps on coming.  Why can’t it just be Plug-n-WiFi?  Client connectivity and troubleshooting, gathering network-wide stastical data, visualizing and automatically reacting to the RF environment (or better yet, acting on predictive data), and deploying APs in the right locations all need to be very automagic.  Heck, I’d be OK with voice-activated Wi-Fi configuration. By the way, I think I’ve found the problem…

Most people in Silicon Valley are far too geeky.  There are countless brilliant engineers there with IQs that could be used to describe the temperature on Venus, and they drive the boat.  These engineers play roles like Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, and yes, even CEO.  How then are we ever going to reach a point where someone is relating to normal people (like me)?  For this blog, I define normal as “not as smart as most of those engineers I just described.”

There are a certain number of tasks that seem unavoidable, such as creating profiles (a set of parameters assigned to a user group) and hooking the Wi-Fi infrastructure into Active Directory and other backend systems, but even those should be Minority Report simple.

You know, mesh is a big piece of this too because cabling is a major pain and cost.  Yeah, yeah, I know, some of you overly-analytical types are thinking, “well, the cable is already there, so you might as well use it.”  To that, I say, “in the future, it would be nice not to have to worry about cable plants.”  I have a nice, crisp five dollar bill (picture me snapping it sharply in front of you) that says there will come a time when Cat5/5e/6 won’t do the trick, and new cable plants will be required.

Today’s SOHO gear is almost Plug-n-WiFi, when it supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) of course.  It would be super cool to have an “Insta-Fi” enterprise system.  You push a button, and voila – Wi-Fi.  You want mesh?  Hit the ON button and…Wi-Fi.  Did I mention that this blog was about wishful thinking?   Hooking the Wi-Fi infrastructure to the Wi-Fi management system should be Plug-n-WiFi too.  Power on APs, and…done.  You know what I think we have to do to reach this goal?  We need to hire dumber CEOs (or at least CEOs who don’t have an engineering background), dumber Marketing VPs, and dumber Product Managers.  Why not dumber Engineers too?  Because somebody has to build all of the easy-to-use stuff the dumber people come up with!  I have supreme confidence that engineering can build anything you ask for…but the problem is that everyone is asking for the wrong thing.  These smart people are killing us!

Besides being mega cool for the enterprise, my pipe dream also has back-end advantages for the Wi-Fi infrastructure manufacturer.  Think about the cost of field sales teams.  Salaries, travel, entertainment, and other expenses…in order to win deals and to support VARs.  If my Plug-n-WiFi dream existed anywhere in today’s market, it would mean that inside sales could handle 90% of the sales process.  Good inside sales guys would rake in the dough by selling, “Enterprise Wi-Fi by dumb guys for dumb guys.”  There wouldn’t be anything complicated to worry about, so those super-smart field sales teams would be wondering what to do with themselves. Of course, you know that as soon as I publish this blog, System Engineers and Account Managers are going to start blasting me about their jobs.  Hey fellas, don’t worry, nobody in the industry has realized my pipedream yet, so you can keep your job for a while longer. What can I say?  You got screwed by being born so smart.

/Interlude-start

At Aerohive, we have the dream team of SEs.  Holy smokes batman, these guys are awesome.

/Interlude-end

So where do we start (besides hiring dumber people in non-engineering roles)?  I think the first thing is to understand how users think and then build a GUI interface that is so intuitive, that very little, if any, thinking is required to use it.  All vendors need to come to a consensus on what a GUI interface needs to look and feel like.  Perhaps the Wi-Fi Alliance needs to drive this effort.  They could call it “Task Group Easy Button.”  Next, we need to turn what is currently a manual transmission into a 6-speed automatic.  Features, like Active Directory integration, that cause SEs to break out in a cold sweat, should be “PhD” simple – that is, “Push here Dummy.”

A conversation between you and your Wireless Network Management Systems (WNMS) might currently go something like tihs:

You: HAL, can you please integrate with Active Directory?

WNMS

You: Well what about applying an Application Layer Gateway for TFTP to SSID Engineering?

WNMS

You: OK, well if you’re not going to do that, how about changing the firewall settings on SSID Sales to block incoming Telnet traffic?

WNMS

You: Dude, what are you good for anyway?  Grrrr.  (Clanging and banging heard in the background…)

WNMS

I’d love to hear some feedback on this one.

Comments»

1. Keith Parsons - December 28, 2009

Wishful thinking there Tex…

It’s not the infrastructure side, but the client side that needs this type of support.

The Wi-Fi Vendors (like Aerohive) can only do so much from the AP side, we need to get the Client-Side folks to play nice.

Though the Wi-Fi Alliance is pretty good at getting clients to meet some very low level spec, getting the clients to actually do something useful and controllable… not likely.

So here’s to starting 2010 with Wishful thinking that client vendors will work together *this* year…

2. Devin Akin - January 7, 2010

I guess Mr. Jobs is too busy to recognize that the Devinator sent him some love in the blog. No super-cool MacBook Pro showed up. Maybe he’s waiting to send me an iTablet or iSlate or whatever it’s going to be called. Man, I want one of those BIGTIME.