Ready for Wireless?

“Wireless was once regarded as the ‘wart’ on the back of wired networks, but now the balance is shifting towards wireless, particularly as organisations want to build on the benefits of their existing, limited wireless deployments,” said Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill Group

“However,” he claimed, “most companies just aren’t ready for that shift. They have wireless hot spots which can’t reach everywhere; or worse still, have implemented wireless networks which can’t be easily upscaled and are destined to be ripped and replaced in a short period of time.”

Kilpatrick was speaking as the company became UK distributor for California-based vendor Xirrus, a leader in high performance wireless networks.

“Wireless is more cost-effective, more convenient, less disruptive, encourages productivity – and users want it,” continued Kilpatrick. ” The fast growth of BYOD is just one of the indicators that the world is moving steadily towards greater use of wireless. Users want to use their smartphones, tablets and laptops, wirelessly, wherever they happen to be.

“That’s great, but who is thinking about the fact that each device makes an incremental load on the network and that each user will typically look to increment their usage? And that companies are going to want to put, not just their web browsing and email onto wireless, but also their business critical applications and multi-media – and they’ll want it to work faultlessly.

“If users are to gain the benefits of BYOD and wireless,” stressed Kilpatrick, “they need to set up wireless networks with pervasive coverage that have the performance to cope with a high number of users and a wide range of applications, both now and as they expand usage. Wireless networks need to be extremely flexible, so that many more users can be added easily, without affecting performance and without requiring major infrastructure upheaval.

“The huge increase in BYOD and wireless in the last couple of years has
shown us that the IT landscape can change dramatically and unpredictably in a very short space of time. So anyone installing or upgrading wireless now has to be confident it can cope with any unpredictable rise in wireless use in the future. The only thing that can be reliably predicted is that usage and traffic volumes will increase.

“We selected Xirrus because it provides the solutions that can make this shift to wireless work reliably and cost-effectively, offering users the ability to easily expand wireless use and to increase the number of users, without major infrastructure upheaval.”

Sean Larner, Vice President International Sales at Xirrus, said: “Mobility is now the norm and people expect to connect without wires. With more than 800 million* wireless-enabled devices being produced every year, innovative organisations are using them to engage with their customers and transform their business models.”

“As the leader in high-performance wireless networks, we are strategically partnering with companies around the world to provide powerful, scalable, and trusted wireless solutions for our customers, giving them the confidence that their networks perform, even under the most demanding circumstances,” Larner continued. “We are delighted to welcome Wick Hill Group as our latest distributor and wish them every success in the future.”

*Figures provided from the Wi-Fi Alliance

Xirrus solutions

Benefits

• Designed for pervasive enterprise coverage, not just hotspots

• Designed for density of BYOD, not just 10 people in a conference room

• Designed for multi-media and critical applications, not just email and web
browsing

• Designed to be adaptive and upgraded as requirements grow, not replaced as
technology changes

• Designed to lower total cost of ownership by requiring less equipment and
infrastructure, not more

Xirrus XR Series Wireless Arrays
Xirrus XR Series Wireless Arrays are the first modular Wi-Fi products of their kind featuring upgradeability, high scalability, high performance and integrated security. The series ranges from the XR-1000 up to the XR-6000
XR-1000

The Xirrus XR-1000 Wireless Array provides superior price/performance value by integrating the unmatched combination of two multi-state (2.4GHz and 5GHz) radios with high gain directional antennas, an onboard multi-gigabit switch, controller, firewall, threat sensor and spectrum analyser all built on a modular chassis designed to meet the needs of network designs, including the demand for coverage in high RF attenuation environments (dense walls), designs supporting low user/device density coverage and designs that include isolated locations where reliable wireless coverage is desired.

XI Series Wireless APs
The Xirrus XI Series 802.11n Wireless Access Points are modular devices configured into Xirrus XR Series Arrays that provide best-in-class connectivity supporting the growing needs of smartphones, tablets and laptops.

The XI APs allow organisations to meet the performance needs of their users, and the RF management needs of the business. Available in 300 Mbps as well as 450 Mbps models, the Xirrus XI Series APs offer superior coverage, bandwidth and reliability.

FACTFILE:
 Established in 1976, value added distributor Wick Hill specialises in secure IP infrastructure solutions and convergence. The company sources and delivers best-of-breed, easy-to-use solutions through its channel partners, with a portfolio that covers security, performance, access, networking, convergence and hosted solutions.

Wick Hill is part of the Wick Hill Group, based in Woking, Surrey with sister offices in Hamburg. Wick Hill is particularly focused on providing a wide range of value added support for its channel partners. This includes a strong lead generation and conversion programme, technical and consultancy support for reseller partners in every stage of the sales process, and extensive training facilities.

Xirrus is the leading provider of high-performance wireless networks. Our array-based solutions perform under the most demanding circumstances—always. Wired-like reliability and superior security allow our customers to confidently take their business-critical applications and operations mobile. Our solutions are unique in the industry, transforming enterprises and organizations around the world. At a time when everyone expects to connect wirelessly everywhere and business is increasingly done in the cloud, Xirrus wireless solutions are providing a vital strategic business and IT infrastructure advantage in thousands of deployments worldwide. Headquartered in Thousand Oaks, CA, Xirrus is a privately held enterprise designing and manufacturing its products and solutions in the USA. For more information, visit www.xirrus.com.