The Solution that All Businesses Need for Cost-Effective, Scalable WiFi Optimization

Does your business have 5 or 5,000 employees? Does everyone gather in one or two rooms, or are employees stretched across a sprawling campus or skyscraper? Perhaps you’re a distributed enterprise with employees and offices in every type of situation imaginable – small, remote sites; crowded warehouses; dense downtown buildings; etc.

Since every workplace is unique, it can seem like each one needs its own set of WiFi optimization tools. After all, what works for a 5 person operation couldn’t also support a 5,000 person set-up, right?

Wrong.

While each office may need a personalized network design, and while each will face unique challenges every day, every office, no matter its size or location, can be optimized with the same AI-based WiFi Automation platform.

Here’s how these platforms work and what to look for when making a purchasing decision.

How AI-based WiFi Automation platforms work

Just like it sounds, these platforms automate the optimization of a WiFi network. They do that by continuously analyzing data from the RF environment in which the network operates. Then, thanks to its AI software, the platform learns from that analysis. Specifically, it learns to recognize normal and abnormal network behavior. When something questionable pops up in the analysis, the platform can immediately alert IT with the issue, the root cause, and actionable resolutions. 

With the platform keeping intelligent eyes on the entire network at all times, IT teams can focus on other mission-critical tasks.

Platforms cost-effectively scale IT

One of the greatest benefits of these platforms is that they can just as easily monitor 50 WiFi devices as 50,000. This means that:

• The same platform can be used at every one of a company’s sites, regardless of the size. This has the added benefit of requiring IT to only learn one system, no matter how many sites they oversee.
• A company can continue using the same platform even if their operations rapidly grow.
• Companies can depend on the platform to give IT teams the support they need to optimize increasingly complex networks, even if there isn’t room in the budget to grow personnel.

Capabilities needed for the best ROI

To fully boost operational efficiency and get the real-time optimization that your business needs, look for the following capabilities:

• Proactive alerts
• Complete network visibility
• 24/7 analytics
• Remote troubleshooting
• Vendor agnostic

Proactive alerts reduce network downtime

With so many moving pieces and so many critical processes dependent on the WiFi, IT can’t afford to respond to issues reactively. Any automation platform used should provide IT with proactive, near real-time notifications of changing network conditions. This allows IT to resolve issues soon after they occur, often before end users are ever affected. This safeguards productivity and allows small issues to be resolved quickly before they can turn into large headaches.

Complete network visibility removes mysteries

Both for security reasons and optimization, IT teams need to know exactly which devices are connected to a network. Thanks to behavioral profiling and device fingerprinting, platforms can give IT this omniscient look into the WiFi ecosystem.

As a bonus, some platforms will use device fingerprinting to classify access points, and provide automatic alerts for any unknown or unauthorized APs that connect to the network.

24/7 analytics give decision makers all pertinent data

AI-based platforms are responsible for a lot (analytics, testing, monitoring), and in the midst of those responsibilities, it’s important that platforms don’t ever stop listening to the network. This includes:

• Constantly analyzing both frequencies
• Analyzing wired and wireless devices
• Analyzing network behavior even when running tests
• Automatically storing historical analytics

This is important because the network can’t be completely optimized if decision makers are missing information. If the platform stops monitoring one or both frequencies to run tests, information is lost. If the platform only monitors wireless devices, information is lost. If the platform only analyzes real-time data, long-term performance and health trends will be lost, depriving administrators of information that could be used to cost-effectively design upgrade/update plans for the network.

Remote troubleshooting keeps IT in control no matter what

Whether IT is responsible for one location or many, remote troubleshooting is paramount for network optimization. Without it, teams are forced to travel – either across campus, across town, or possibly even across the country – to resolve WiFi issues. If travel is impossible or delayed by something like bad traffic, issues persist and businesses and end users suffer.

All of that can be avoided with remote troubleshooting. With it, IT can optimize the WiFi from any location at any time, saving businesses time and money.

Vendor agnostic designs future-proof the WiFi

Automation platforms are easily scalable, but to fully provide future-proofing insurance, they should also be vendor agnostic. This allows them to be used continuously, providing uninterrupted analytics for IT, no matter what vendor changes a business makes.

Optimization and WiFi Assurance require Automation

No matter the size of your business, your WiFi network is critical to your success. AI-based WiFi Automation gives your IT teams the expert insights and proactive analytics that they need to ensure the WiFi is always reliable and high-performing, regardless of how the company changes. 

Work with the award-winning, best-in-class Wireless Intelligence Platform™ (WIP) and experience:

• 90% reduction in Mean-Time-to-Resolution
• 60% decrease in WiFi problem tickets
• 80% reduction in remote site visits