In this article, I talk about some of the important trends that I think will be quite popular in the discussions we will have among the community or with our customers.
Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)
So this year, I really hope that we will start seeing some Wi-Fi 6 client devices being release so we can start playing with it. I would like 2019 to be the year of Wi-Fi 6 in practice and not only in theory. I would love to see the future iPhone supporting Wi-Fi 6.
Nevertheless, from an Engineer point of view, I believe that we will have to keep educating ourselves on the technology. First, because we need to apprehend it better. Second, we need to be able to advise and educate our customers. We are going to see a lot of false positive messages around the Wi-Fi 6 technology and we need to be able to guide and help our customers.
5G
In the enterprise space, I have seen a couple of companies in Europe using alternative wireless solutions when Wi-Fi was not perfectly applicable to their use case. So I do see the use of alternative wireless solutions, such as CBRS/private LTE, being used more this year. On that note, Ruckus is coming to market with a set of CBRS LTE access points and the FCC has reserved some spectrum in the 3.5GHz band to be used for CBRS.
More Automation/Scripting
With more and more vendors offering APIs to interact with their equipment, it becomes part of the technical solution and can help us configure and monitor our infrastructures. On that note, I have seen a couple companies hiring programmers to add to their networking team in order to program additional services which will interact with the Wi-Fi infrastructure using APIs. From the point of view of a VAR or consultant, it is a good way to perform the work faster and, therefore, be more competitive.
More Cloud
All of this leads to making me think that Wi-Fi solutions will leverage more and more cloud services in 2019. The cloud clearly allows the systems to be more intelligent, more flexible and we can all appreciate a little fewer bugs (or at least, faster ways to fix them).
What are your thoughts for 2019? Feel free to leave a comment to start the discussion.
Cheers'
François Vergès