In addition to CommandCenter, which greatly simplifies the provisioning of new customers, Xirrus is also announcing enhancements to their MSP program to improve benefits.
Bruce Miller, Xirrus’ VP of product marketing
Cloud Wi-Fi network vendor Xirrus has taken a big step to boost its managed service provider (MSP) business with the introduction of CommandCenter, which greatly simplifies the provisioning of new customers and so speeds up time to revenue for Wi-Fi-as-a-Service (WaaS).
“This is brand new functionality, which we have baked into our cloud management system,” said Bruce Miller, VP of product marketing at Xirrus. “We believe there is nothing like it out there with other vendors. It lets the MSP provision a new customer on their own, putting this autonomous control in the hands of the MSP. It speeds up processing to minutes from what may have taken hours before.”
CommandCenter is a free element within the Xirrus Management System for MSPs. MSPs can now create customer accounts instantly, whereas before they used to have to stage customer networks prior to provisioning. That’s a key factor in massively reduces time to deployment. Command Center also has built-in support and feedback tools enabling fast problem resolution, reduces WAN traffic bandwidth with distributed AP and cloud architecture, and provides integrated EasyPass Wi-Fi access services for guests, BYOD onboarding, and personal Wi-Fi security
While both the WaaS business and Xirrus’ MSP business are in their relatively early days, the company sees great potential for both
“Our MSP business today is probably around 15 per cent of our total,” Miller said. “We have worked with a lot of MSPs selling their services into small businesses, and as we expanded our product line, we are working more closely with them.”
The MSP base covers a broad spectrum of service providers.
“We have some carriers, and we also have some extremely focused MSPs,” Miller stated. “We have one in Canada that focuses on car dealerships, companies that rarely have an IT person on site. We are also enabling MSPs who may have never supported wireless previously at all in their offerings to add Wi-Fi-as-a-service.”
Wi-Fi-as-a-service is still a relatively small piece of the managed services pie.
“The market is potentially huge, but is still relatively untapped at this point,” Miller indicated. “It’s much less than a lot of other managed services but it is growing. The trend is more in small business without the dedicated IT– like schools, health care facilities, and assisted living places.”
In addition to Command Center, Xirrus is also announcing simultaneous changes to the MSP program itself.
“We are rolling out these changes to the MSP program at the same time,” Miller said. “We are enhancing the program to make it richer in terms of benefits, including providing discounts for doing Level One and Level Two support. We are also introducing a grace period for enabling new licenses.”
