These days, customers consider Wi-Fi a right, rather than a privilege. Companies who deal directly with the public, or who need to ensure internal Wi-Fi is always available for employees working anywhere in the building, are now looking to WiFi-as-a-Service (WaaS) to provide guaranteed service.
Wi-Fi is no longer an “optional extra” when it comes to providing connectivity to employees or consumers. Companies are now considering it critical to business operations, and are turning to outsourced providers to ensure nothing is left to chance when it comes to protecting the quality of service—even if that means bypassing the traditional networking and IT departments.
For some enterprises, Wi-Fi has even passed into the realm of “infrastructure overhead” with IT departments electing to hand over the reins to the experts so they can focus on more strategic projects and operations.
In past decades WaaS has been known as Managed Network Service (MNS). Today, providing full turnkey design, installation, and management of all IT assets (routers, switches, servers, firewalls, etc.) to deliver a Wi-Fi solution is called WiFi-as-a Service (WaaS).
WaaS has application to meet the needs of a whole host of company needs. It can work for organisations that have no existing Wi-Fi network as well as those that have an existing network but are looking for a managed solution for a guest internet only Wi-Fi network.
Benefits of WiFi-as-a-Service
There are several benefits to a WaaS network for Australian enterprises.
Predictable
Today’s networks are 24/7/365, and any disruptions to service can have an immediate impact on operations, and hence productivity.
Outsource the headache of providing a reliable and predictable service to ensure disruptions are eliminated. Like any cloud-based service, all you need to do is pay for ongoing maintenance and support costs.
Improve customer experience
Using WaaS networks, enterprises can gain sophisticated location and user intelligence from location-based analytics.
If your enterprise provides public Wi-Fi, WaaS allows you to engage with end consumers through location-based advertising and ultimately optimise their experience.
Refocus IT
When you shift your company to using WaaS, it allows your IT department the freedom to refocus their energies into other areas that require a more hands-on approach. You can automate your troubleshooting and network monitoring, which are areas that traditionally absorb human resources. You can then focus in-house IT staff on more strategic, mission-critical projects.
Scalable
If you’re running a campus-style organisation or provide any kind of connectivity to consumers, WaaS makes it easy to achieve economies of scale.
By providing a self-fixing, self-running Wi-Fi network, your organisation can better concentrate on your core business rather than making sure your infrastructure meets increasing demands for coverage, capacity, users, devices and applications.
Transfer CapEx to OpEx
Cost control is, and will, remain a dominant requirement. IT budgets are always in flux, and many businesses are seeing IT spending as less strategic and more as overhead. IT and networks remain essential, but rapid advances in technology and accelerating personnel costs must be dealt with more cost-effectively.
(Read more about the benefits of moving to OpEx for your IT spending here)
This is where shifting to WaaS makes it easier to transfer these budgetary concerns to an OpEx model for IT expenditure.
Read original article here.