How To Manage Customers’ High Wireless Expectations

By Gary Abad, Meru Networks for, CRN July 10, 2012

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Employees want office or public WiFi networks to run as flawlessly as the one they have at home. It is just supposed to function. There is no reason why they can’t get that kind of service. In fact, they need that kind of reliability. Some of those dangling blue cables may not give them connections anymore.

For a value added reseller, setting a high standard is the most sound way to grow your business. Resellers can only really earn a steady margin when customers have headaches. As wireless has become the default transport for many organizations, eliminating their wireless problems is a classic VAR service. It’s a priority that VARs re-think their design and approach to building mission critical, fault tolerant WiFi networks.

Robust wireless access can be a competitive differentiator for your clients. Look on Hotels.com or TripAdvisor: consumers rate hotels by the quality and availability of their wireless access. (Here’s an amusing historical faux pas: Back in 2005, Dubai’s Burj Al Arab hotel, one of the world’s most luxurious hotels, sported a helipad, transportation to the airport in a Rolls Royce and personal butlers, but they neglected to install wireless.) Starbucks has increased customer loyalty and hang time with wireless.

Some of the more advanced wireless deployments can be found at educational institutions and hospitals because they had to deal with many of these issues earlier than most. Think of a typical university. It must serve a large, and ever-changing, population of users who will connect to the network with a sprawling diversity of machines not approved by IT. Large numbers of visitors and temporary users are a regular, daily occurrence. While some buildings might be only a few months old, others might date back to the 19th Century. Residential buildings must be connected to laboratories stocked with high-voltage equipment.

And on top of it all, security and privacy, particularly at large research institutions, must be maintained. Spend an afternoon in an emergency room and you will encounter many of the same factors.

We’ve gone from thinking about wireless as a luxury item to thinking about wireless access as a necessity. Next, we want consumers and customers not to have to think about wireless at all.