Wireless networking

When topless meetings are business appropriate

Topless meetings? Before you get your knickers in a twist, be advised this G-rated concept–barring laptops, BlackBerries etc. from business meetings –is starting to take off.  So to speak. 

Even tech heavyweights such as Google, Apple and Yahoo are going topless in an effort to cut down on distractions. The problem? Meeting attendees in this increasingly wireless-connected world, spend group time texting or shopping when they should be paying attention. (Gulp…guilty.)

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HP ProCurve-Colubris acquisition closes; channels unify

HP’s acquisition of Colubris Networks was finalized Wednesday, and the basics of how the products and channels will be integrated are beginning to firm up.

HP will integrate Colubris’ product line into ProCurve’s networking portfolio, and Colubris partners are invited to join the ProCurve channel, ProCurve said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. Continued »

Will Juniper acquire its way into WLAN?

The Financial Times (FT) website reported rumors today that Juniper Networks is interested in acquiring either Meru Networks or Aruba Networks — both WLAN providers.

FT attributes the rumors to sources close to the company, but also quotes two analysts that support the speculation.

A WLAN acquisition for Juniper wouldn’t be shocking. At this point, Juniper needs to secure its place in the WLAN market if it intends to take on Cisco. Cisco controls a dominant share of that market sector, which it bought its way into through the acquisition of Airespace in 2006. Juniper is in the process of reorganizing its executive team and strategy, and has made no bones about its goal of stealing a dominant share of the enterprise networking market from Cisco. Continued »

HP ProCurve acquires its way into WLAN

HP ProCurve announced Monday it will buy wireless local area network (WLAN) company Colubris Networks. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.

Colubris is the latest in a string of WLAN players to be snapped up by major networking companies in a race to diversify offerings and offer end-to-end solutions. Continued »

New leadership for Motorola’s handset division

Motorola said Monday that it appointed former Qualcomm executive Sanjay Jha to head its struggling wireless handset business. Appointing Jha was the first major step toward spinning of the handset unit, a move Motorola announced in the spring.

Jha will also serve as co-chief executive office with Gregory Q. Brown, who will lead the company’s home and enterprise broadband business. Continued »

Belden-Trapeze deal complete

Belden Cable announced this week that its $133 million acquisition of one of the largest privately owned Wireless LAN (WLAN) providers Trapeze Networks is complete.

Published statements from Belden still don’t make clear how, or even if, Trapeze’s 200 partners will be worked into Belden’s much larger channel. In fact, a published quote from Trapeze president Jim Vogt avoids any mention of the company’s channel, but does laud Belden’s sales and marketing organization. Continued »

For an edge in future career development, brush up on those wireless skills

This seems to be my week for rambling about training. In the blog I write for my employer, SWOT Management Group, I coughed up these thoughts about whether or not vendors should tier their training and favor their most committed VARs. This post here for TechTarget falls more along the lines of suggesting where you might consider spending your own training budget.

CompTIA reports that in all but two of 14 countries surveyed, wireless and radio frequency technology implementation and service skills will dramatically increase in importance over the next five years. Wireless skills were actually the second most important skill set for future hiring in South Africa (behind security) and France (where it came after Web technologies.) The countries covered by the survey included the aforementioned nations plus … Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

When it comes to specific industries, healthcare managers and IT teams in the education sector were more likely to say wireless would be critically important three years from now.

What does this all mean? For starters, this just plain makes sense in emerging countries, where the investments in data communications infrastructure have been less substantial than in the United States. Why on earth wouldn’t you look to advanced wireless first in some of these countries? Meanwhile, the radio frequency movement, believe it or not, is gaining some momentum from all of the green technology and sustainability efforts going on. One big growth area will be wireless sensors: for home energy management applications, in the so-called smart grid (on your electric meters) and within data centers, where they’ll be used to track energy efficiency.

Here’s some more data on where IT managers surveyed by CompTIA see future potential skills gaps.

Heather Clancy is a channel communications consultant for SWOT Management Group, where she focuses on simplicity and seeing eye to eye. You can e-mail her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

Tech Data wants you to step outside

Chances are at least SOME portion of your business comes from wireless networking at this point, but I’d bet most of it is of the indoor variety. Well, Tech Data is throwing down the gauntlet to some of the specialized wireless distributors through its new relationship with BIG Wireless, which sells various outdoor wireless technology and services.

The deal, which points back to Tech Data’s Wireless Specialized Business Unit, will let Tech Data VARs “purchase, brand and resell” BIG Wireless’s services. The company’s specialty is outdoor wireless for municipalities, corporate campuses or universities. These include wireless site surveys, point-to-point path studies, voice/video over wireless, GPS location, Federal Communications Commission licensing compliance and so on. Many of the more obscure requirements for outdoor wireless that a traditional solution provider might not have been able to invest in. If the reseller chooses, they can brand BIG Wireless’ services as their own.

How much business is in outdoor wireless? My gut is that it’s going to be sort of like Wi-Fi adoption: It will creep up in adoption for the right reason, it helps people do their jobs better. There will be some debates over format of course (ala the WiMax specification I wrote about in January), which is all the more reason why you might choose to team up with a company like BIG rather than investing in your technical skills right now.

Heather Clancy is a widely published business journalist and strategic channel communications consultant with SWOT Management Group. You can reach her at hclancy@swotmg.com.

Cisco acquires tools to clean up airwaves

Cisco Systems Inc. has shopped successfully for a set of tools that can help its wireless customers clean up the interference and improve the efficiency of their networks.

Cisco announced today that it has agreed to acquire Cognio Inc., which makes spectrum analysis products designed to identify, locate and eliminate sources of radio-frequency interference that can do to a wireless network the same thing that high-power lines do to reception on an AM radio.

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A chance for the channel to compete with RFID

The last few days have not been kind to radio frequency identification (RFID).

ABI Research reported today that Wi-Fi is “muscling in on RFID’s location-based services markets,” predicting that the market for Wi-Fi as a real-time location services (RTLS) provider will grow by more than 1300% over the next five years. That forecast came just four days after the managing director of Heavey RF, an Irish firm, issued his own report calling RFID “potentially one of the biggest technical blunders in history.”

The Heavey RF report says that RFID has a place in the market but will never fully live up to its hype because it is less reliable and cost effective than bar-coding. If you agree, that opens the door for a new technology in the RTLS market. Enter Wi-Fi, whose revenues in the market will increase from $59 million this year to $839 million in 2012, according to New York-based ABI.

“In the past, companies wishing to deploy RTLS had to buy proprietary RFID systems, inlcuding very expensive readers,” said Stan Schatt, ABI’s vice president and research director, in a statement. “But there is now such a large installed base of Wi-Fi equipment worldwide that Wi-Fi-based RTLS becomes cost effective for companies that had never considered it before.”

ABI recommends that vendors — including market leader Cisco and main competitors Aruba and Trapeze — work with channel partners who have RTLS experience to best take advantage of this new opportunity.

“It is a sophisticated solution that requires a knowledgeable reseller,” Schatt said.

ABI pointed out several benefits of Wi-Fi RTLS over RFID: Users that already have wireless networks don’t need to install extra cabling, and it utilizes specialized software to maximize its effectiveness. But there are also some problems with Wi-Fi RTLS compared to RFID, according to ABI: It’s “somewhat less accurate,” less secure and requires more wireless access points.