Wireless

Mojo Networks Aims to Open Up the Wi-Fi Market

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  July 27, 2016

Startup Wi-Fi solutions company Mojo Networks may be a guppy swimming among whales, but the company aims to create a sea change in how this market works. CEO Rick Wilmer explains his company plans to offer its Wi-Fi access points to the market at cost, and wait for the other vendors in this product category to follow suit. If things work out as planned, he says, businesses no longer will be roped into using just one vendor’s proprietary access points, which could potentially save them 30 to 50 percent.

Mojo Networks instead intends to make its money offering Wi-Fi as a service. And part of the company’s plan entails the company delivering its access points in a software-only mode that’s preloaded on hardware from leading original design manufacturers like Accton of Taiwan.

“We’ve seen proprietary hardware standardized for computing and storage, and it’s time for this to happen in Wi-Fi,” he notes. “This new business model is a direct response to the impact of the cloud on wireless networking and where, in today’s world, access point value is actually being created. Software and virtualized cloud-managed Wi-Fi is fundamental to this revolution. It allows us to achieve what was previously impossible: fast scaling to meet demand, rapid enterprise-wide software updates, more flexibility for IT organizations, and better business agility for our customers. Our new business model provides Mojo’s purpose-built unified cloud, along with our leading edge access points, without markups, thus eliminating Wi-Fi as a capital expenditure.”

Today if a company has an existing Wi-Fi deployment using one vendor’s access points and then wants to move to another vendor’s Wi-Fi solution, it has to rip out and replace what it already has installed because different vendors’ access points don’t interoperate, Wilmer says. But if the big players in Wi-Fi follow Mojo’s lead on this, he added, people can buy access points like they buy lightbulbs, knowing the different piece parts will work together.

Of course, getting major players like Aruba/HP, Cisco (News - Alert)/Meraki, and Brocade/Ruckus follow in the footsteps of a startup like Mojo Networks will be no small feat. But Wilmer says that many companies are now embracing the Open Compute model and, if Mojo Network prompts bigger players to move in this direction, it won’t be the first time in the Wi-Fi industry that a relatively unknown startup disrupted a market.




Edited by Alicia Young