Ruckus Wireless is talking up its new Unleashed range of controller-less Wi-Fi access points at GITEX, and says regional customers are already seeing the benefits of its technology,
“We had one factory in Jebel Ali, where they had 11 of our competitor’s access points. We did an evaluation – and for our access points, they needed four. This is where we’re saving money,” said Muetassem Raslan, regional manager for the Middle East at Ruckus Wireless.
He said the company’s directional technology is behind a lot of the benefits: “Beam flexing eliminates one of the main problems with Wi-Fi, which is going the distance. By covering a greater distance, we can reduce the number of access points you require – by reducing the number of access points you’re not only saving the cost of the access points, but cabling, switching, management.”
The Unleashed range, which was launched earlier this month, is targeted primarily at SMEs, and is designed to run without the attention of a dedicated IT department.
“With a controller environment, it has to be managed by your IT crowd – with Unleashed, you can set it up in a couple of minutes. You plug it in, follow the wizard – it’s like setting up a consumer access point. It’s cheaper, you don’t have to put it in a server room – you basically have the same thing a bank would have, but you’ve got a far more simple environment,” said Michael Fletcher, regional sales director for Middle East and Africa at Ruckus.
