- Image by .DAWEED via Flickr
The race is on: people are installing wireless networks (WLANs) faster now than they are installing Ethernet. The recent ratification of 802.11n is only adding fuel to that fire, by providing most users a faster connection over the air than they can get plugged in at their desk. Enterprises were originally driven by the need for mobility, but now are driven even more by the lower installation costs of wireless compared to new fixed desk ports. Finally, WLANs are beginning to edge out Ethernet as the preferred user access.
The adoption of WLAN for primary user access transitions business critical applications from wired to wireless, introducing a growing number and variety of applications and devices, creating a new challenge for IT managers to ensure that the applications work reliably all the time over a large distributed WLANs.
However, no one has been paying much attention to the true costs of operating these ever-growing and business critical wireless networks. WLANs are certainly more convenient than wired networks and now faster too, but they can also be more costly to operate than their wired predecessors. An August 2009 Aberdeen report, Multi-site and Campus Area WLAN 2009: Benefits of a Centralized Approach, found enterprises reported a 63% increase in WLAN management costs and 69% increase in management employees over last 2 years. Another recently-conducted survey of over 800 enterprises using WLANs from all major WLAN vendors asked “What are your top priorities for WLAN?” The winners: client troubleshooting (56%) and application delivery (37%)—over the expected favorites like security and integration of wired and wireless networks.
Why is this happening? The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis of the “true cost” of acquiring a typical 100 access point WLAN shows that 40% is typically the hardware costs (APs, controllers and wiring) while 20% is the software licensing and support. The problem, as reflected in the surveys, is that the remaining 40% of the TCO is an unplanned variable expended on IT for dedicating time monitoring the wireless network and performing forensics chasing down problems, trying to recreate whatever can’t be understood from the SNMP history, using sniffers and spectrum analyzers and other tools just to get a handle on the situation and get people back to being productive. This added time, which takes away from other, more important activities, impacts business operations and productivity—and time translates to money in the form of higher costs of operating the network.
We need something that addresses those newly-expanding operations costs; something that changes the WLAN model from reacting to downtime to preventing it in the first place. Something has to change wireless IT from chasing down the problems that impacts business to detecting problems before the real business gets underway—every day. The good news is that there is a way—a technology shift from just monitoring the network, to making sure it will work as needed when called upon.
