Wifi Revolution

When planning for the future, it often helps to see what worked and what didn’t in the past. That’s part of the strategy being employed by Firetide, Inc., a company that develops multi-service, wireless mesh networks.

 

The company today laid out its game plan for 2007, after reviewing successes during 2006 attributed in large part to Firetide’s accurate predictions regarding wireless market trends. A strong technology base and distribution channel also helped, the company noted.

 

What does Firetide see ahead? In a nutshell: a maturing wireless market in which municipal and enterprise-based applications will drive growth for mesh networks.

 

Wireless mesh networks, for those not familiar, are those in which data travels to its destination along a series of nodes, each of which hands the data off to the next in line. Mesh provides a high level of flexibility and reliability, since data can be routed along a variety of paths, bypassing any non-working or blocked areas as needed.

 

“The amazing growth of WiFi meshes of all forms is powerful evidence that meshes have established themselves as the most important architecture for wireless networks,” Fairpoint Group analyst Craig Mathias said in a statement.

 

Mathias added: “As demands for reliability, performance, and even ubiquity in wireless networks continue to build, meshes are the obvious answer.”

A very important municipal-based mesh application, Firetide said in its announcement, is public safety. This includes such items are IP-based video cameras, which by themselves may represent a $650 million market this year.

 

“Public safety is the leading motivator for municipalities deploying wireless networks,” Firetide’s CEO, Bo Larsson, said in a statement.

 

Larsson noted that Firetide’s solutions that allow conventional surveillance cameras to operate wirelessly using a mesh network have been very popular. This type of system means cameras can be operated anywhere at low cost, often resulting in a 25 percent (or more) drop in criminal activity.

 

Mesh isn’t just for municipal-based applications, of course. Enterprises also are looking at mesh solutions, and Firetide is delivering. In fact, more than 50 percent of the company’s installation are enterprise-based, including applications such as RFID inventory management and LAN extensions.

 

Firetide has worked to make sure that its solutions address the needs of enterprises, which include support for non-WiFi (News - Alert) devices, multiple security options, and integration with existing private networks.

 

“Municipalities have been the first to discover that mesh networks provide added public safety benefits, including simple solutions for connecting wireless cameras to fight crime and access critical databases throughout a community,” Larsson noted in a statement. “Business are following suit and discovering more uses for mesh networks. With this development, we expect video surveillance and enterprise applications to increase as much as eight times in the next three years.”

Growth for mesh applications—whether it originates from municipalities or enterprises—is driven by a maturing wireless industry in which end-users not only expect but demand reliable network connectivity wherever they go, Firetide noted.

 

To keep up with this demand, Firetide spent some time looking at the factors involved when purchasing decision are made for mesh network solutions. The company listed the following key issues: 

Firetide decided that the single best way to meet those demands is to increase its ability to distribute products and solutions where they are needed.

 

“We are working closely with all of our distributors to drive business and to deliver the right products and solutions to their reseller base,” Larsson said in a statement. “Our sales partners are very enthusiastic about the performance and flexibility of our system because it enables a very quick entry into enterprise class wireless networking at lower cost than most of their previous offerings.”

 

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