Enterprise WLAN market booms by over a quarter

Although reseller suggests technology has become passé

The enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) market is growing frenetically off the back of the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) boom, figures from Infonetics Research suggest.

According to the market watcher, WLAN revenue rose by 16 per cent year on year in the second quarter of 2012, with the enterprise segment bulging by 26 per cent.

Dell'Oro analyst Chris DePuy said firms now consider WLAN infrastructure on a par with Ethernet systems, sparking a need for combined management systems for wired and wireless access at the edge of the enterprise.

"We have a new generation of technology shipping, 802.11ac; a new customer group emerging, service providers; and new architectures being brought to market, cloud services and virtualised software," he added.

Channel services outfit Comms-care provides wireless site surveys on behalf of resellers and marketing director Richard Eglon said demand had shot up in the past six months as more iPads are brought into work.

"The biggest value is coming from providing secure BYOD – not just software but software- and hardware-based security that sets up profiles on those networks," he said. "That is where we are seeing demand from the reseller community and their end users."

VAR React cut its teeth in the WLAN market but managing director Jess Thompson-Hughes said his firm is increasingly eyeing other sectors due to concerns that the technology has been commoditised.

"I agree that the market is growing, and we still do wireless, but it is passé and is not ticking the innovation box anymore," he said.

"End users all want three quotes and there are bigger companies selling WLAN that are happy to live off two to three per cent margin."

However, Keith Reading, managing director at WLAN reseller Qolcom – which has rolled out 190 wireless access points for Reading Football Club – disagreed.

He said wireless had become a "must-have" technology in vertical markets such as healthcare, which need it for applications such as asset tracking.

"You are not going to make money from selling tin and access points," he added.