Eventually enterprises will entirely offload wireless management to service providers, but the cloud service is a first step, Dell says.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

April 26, 2016

2 Min Read
Dell & Aerohive Partner on Cloud-Based Enterprise Network Management

Dell sees a trend of enterprises pushing wireless management to the cloud, and eventually entirely offloading WiFi to service providers.

To that end, Dell Technologies (Nasdaq: DELL) is working with Aerohive Networks Inc. to provide cloud-based management services for enterprise wired and wireless infrastructure.

The service incorporates Dell N-Series switches, Aerohive access points and Aerohive's HiveManager NG cloud-based management solution, Dell said in a statement Tuesday.

HiveManager manages applications, users, policy and switch port status. Moreover, Dell's ProSupport service provides enterprises with a single point of contact for network support.

"This is the next wave of how wireless is delivered," Jeff Baher, senior director of product/solutions/technical marketing at Dell, tells Light Reading. "We're seeing a transition away from do-it-yourself WiFi in the enterprise to WiFi-as-a-service." As service providers deploy 4G and 5G, and enterprises start using them, it just makes more sense to integrated 4G, 5G and WiFi into a package delivered by service providers.

The first step is to move servers and administration to the cloud, managed by the enterprise. "The next move is how much of this can we procure as a service, rather than procuring access points and standing up our own wireless infrastructure?" Behar said. Deploying access points isn't strategic to enterprises.

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading.

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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