Dell & Aerohive Partner on Cloud-Based Enterprise Network Management

News Analysis Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading 4/26/2016

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, , West Coast Bureau Chief, Light Reading.