Lantronix says the cost to enterprise management of their wireless stacks, together with the greater difficulty of updating obsolete embedded technology, makes customers ready for a cutting edge 5G (802.11ac) Wi-Fi connectivity solution for the Internet of Things.
Irvine CA-based Lantronix, which started out making M2M enablement solutions which have now also evolved to encompass the Internet of Things (IoT), has launched the PremierWave 2050 solution. It is an embedded IoT module with enterprise grade security, and is the first 5G Wi-Fi module designed specifically for the IoT.
“This piggybacks on what we offered before,” said Vishal Kakkad, Director of Product Marketing at Lantronix. “Lantronix has been in the connectivity and solutions space for over 25 years. Our focus has not been on traditional computing but always on connecting machines to devices, initially M2M and Ethernet connectivity, and now also IoT that incorporates wireless. We have been offering Wi-Fi for M2M for over a decade, but we have seen a bigger refresh cycle in the last three years, and customers expect more in wireless for IoT.”
Kakkad said the PremierWave 2050 is clearly an enterprise product.
“Its purpose is to focus on production-ready secure enterprise connectivity,” he said. “IoT Wi-Fi modules have been around for a while, but this is the first with 5G connectivity. Connected devices will soon have to support new standards, not just for being at the cutting edge but for taking advantage of what 802.11ac provides in general. When you look at where industrial deployments are headed, 802.11ac will be ubiquitous in the next five years. So starting with it today makes sense for enterprise customers. In the past, we have found that by the time customers finishing integrating Wi-Fi, the technology has already gotten old and the cost of deployment is fairly significant. The PremierWave 2050 is meant to speed up customer time to confidence so they can get to time to market faster.”
Kakkad cited an example of a retailer customer of theirs.
“The customer, which uses this for retail POS, said that the issue was they would ODM a Wi-Fi solution and had a team of 6-8 people to manage their wireless stack. Given that investment, the customers are demanding updated solutions, not a Wi-Fi solution that is one generation behind. 802.11ac also gives customers the benefit of enjoying a slightly better throughput and more density on numbers that can be connected to a single network.
The PremierWave 2050 is designed for a broad variety of vertical markets, including industrial automation, warehouse and logistics, healthcare, retail, environmental monitoring, medical devices, military, railway and transportation.
“It is a higher performance product, which serves as an intelligent edge gateway for IoT deployment.” Kakkad said. “There are many reasons why taking some actions closer to the source of the data may be helpful. This gateway can support that use case without the customer having to go through a major integration shift in their solution.
“It is industrial rated and can work in a wide range of operating temperatures,” Kakkad added. “Not many can support that which are also plug and play to use.”
While this will be a major OEM product, Kakkad said it will also be valuable for their reseller partners.
“We have partnered over our history with all the major component distributors, and we have found that anything that helps the design cycle of the solution to be shorter gets the partner to revenue faster while giving the customer something that is production ready. It’s a strategy which is focused on mitigating customer risk and making the partner money faster out of a particular design.”
PremierWave 2050 evaluation kits are currently available for sampling.
