We’ve been tweeting photos of him doing just about everything imaginable, and now you can play along too. All you have to do is join the Aerohive online community, HiveNation, and reply to the “Wanna BEE” topic.

1- Visit Aerohive’s community, HiveNation: 

 

2- Join the community.

 

3- Find the “Wanna BEE” thread  (plug “Wanna BEE” into our handy search tool in the upper right-hand corner)

 

4- Post a reply to the "Wanna Bee" topic with these words “I Wanna BEE” and also tell us in one sentence why Aerohive is awesome.

 

1) You must use a business email address. No personal email e.g. @yahoo, @gmail, etc. will be accepted.

2) One BEE per person.

3) While supplies last.

4) You must follow the “how it works” steps above. 

Never a dull moment here at the Hive! Want your own bee? Watch the video to learn how your own.

Drakes Supermarkets — with 57 stores throughout South Australia and Queensland employing 5,500 employees — is the largest independent grocery retailer in Australia and specializes in supermarket retailing. In addition to its supermarket stores, the company operates a liquor store and several news agencies.

The company’s strength lies in operating on the principles of a family business and supporting local manufacturers and suppliers. Despite its expansion, the company has managed to keep its focus on the important aspects of the supermarket business — the customer — by always striving to provide superior customer service. The supermarket business relies heavily on accurate inventory control systems. A successful retailer will be able to accurately keep track of what products are selling well, and ensure that customers are satisfied with having what they want stocked on the shelves when they need them. Handheld devices are therefore used for stock taking and ordering.

By implementing Aerohive Wi-Fi, Drakes now uses mobile applications with high performance connectivity, along with centralized management and zero-touch deployment, which has significantly reduced deployment time and cost, and enabled quick problem resolution.

Read the full case study here. 

Cloud networking introduces a new way to deploy, operate, and manage distributed enterprise networks with little or no capital investment in additional appliances or IT resources. Please check out this brief video to learn more about what cloud networking is all about.

Hoogvliet is a supermarket chain with 62 supermarkets and 57 liquor stores, spread across the center of The Netherlands, with a service and distribution hub in Alphen aan den Rijn. Founded in 1968, Hoogvliet now has over 5,000 employees. Originally characterized within the cash n carry model, Hoogvliet has since evolved into a service discount supermarket chain, purveying a wide range of quality goods.

The company prides itself on attention to detail and customer experience, from the smell of freshly baked bread to children’s entertainment, vibrant colors and butchers’ stands where customers can witness employees hard at work. All stores promote Hoogvliet’s winning formula; value for money, quality, friendly, responsible service, and easy and fast. In maintaining these values, technology plays a critical role and works as a foundation for the organization’s on-going development plans.

As a leading European supermarket chain, already promoting a shopping environment built around enhancing ease and customer experience in terms of store layout, Hoogvliet wanted to offer its consumers a self-scanning service to be deployed throughout 90% of its supermarkets, whereby customers could scan items as they go, enabling real time subtotalling. The company also wanted to give customers the best opportunity to take advantage of the many price reduction offers, with the deployment of discount terminals in all 62 supermarkets.

Deploying Zelfscan and the discount terminals, systems that both work with the aid of a WLAN infrastructure, Hoogvliet needed the ability to manage a large volume of devices from one central point at its head office. It was also critical that its wireless service required minimum bandwidth despite a large volume of devices and could be serviced easily and remotely. Hoogvliet chose Aerohive Wi-Fi for secure connectivity and a more efficient and faster mode of shopping.

Read the full case study here. 

• This panel will feature Aerohive customers Bradley Chambers, director of IT for Brainerd Baptist Church and School and Phil Hardin, executive director of technology for the Rowan-Salisbury School System — recently ranked in the top 10 technology-savvy school districts nationwide in the Digital School Districts Survey. Both IT directors have overhauled their wireless networks with Aerohive to handle today’s 21st century classroom demands and will speak to how other school IT departments can optimize their network infrastructures to create mobile device friendly environments.

• The session will be held Monday, June 24 from 4:15–5:15 p.m. CT in the Technology Infrastructure Pavilion, Hall D at the San Antonio Convention Center.

• For more details on the speaking session, please visit the ISTE 2013 program page. 

• Aerohive will be exhibiting its school-optimized and mobile device-friendly Wi-Fi solutions at Booth #12254. Aerohive helps simplify networking for K-12 and higher education customers across the nation by reducing the cost and complexity of campus deployments with award-winning, cooperative control, cloud-enabled Wi-Fi and routing solutions—critical for education customers with limited IT departments and budgets.

• Aerohive’s customers will also be presenting at the booth, discussing how they’ve leveraged Aerohive’s solutions throughout their school buildings, campuses and districts to support today’s 21st century learning environments. Highlights include:

* June 24, 11:00 a.m.: Bradley Chambers, Brainerd Baptist Schools. Read the full case study here. 

* June 25, 11:00 a.m.: Phil Hardin, Rowan-Salisbury School System. Read the full case study here.

* June 26, 2:00 p.m.: Adam Seldow, Chesterfield Schools. Read the full case study here.

At Aerohive, we've long said that one of the major challenges facing customers isn't just about the capital expense of purchasing a WLAN solution, but about what to do when users have three or four (or sometimes more!) clients that they're trying to connect to the Wi-Fi network. Operational expenses for managing the explosion of clients, installation and management of access points, switches, and network infrastructure, and troubleshooting from a remote location are the real heart of the challenge in implementing a successful Wi-Fi solution.

Once again, Aerohive is very pleased to announce another huge step in our mission to Simpli-Fi enterprise networking: the addition of client management to our HiveManager cloud-enabled management solution. Just like you saw with our access points,

then routers,

and recently switches,

Aerohive has added completely automated provisioning and management for your connected clients. 

As we all know, getting clients onto a secure wireless network can be a challenge. Security, privacy, and compliance concerns mean ensuring secure access for authorized clients is absolutely necessary, but ease-of-use, manageability, and time-to-access often lead administrators to try out less-secure solutions in order to enable access — or worst case, prevent any clients not explicitly provisioned by the IT team from connecting to the Wi-Fi.

Either case becomes an operational nightmare in this age of mobility. Most administrators realize that with the introduction of BYOD and Consumerization of IT into the network, differentiating between the iPad a user brought in from home and the one that was issued for a specific business purpose needs some major IT intervention — a burden most aren't prepared to undertake. 

Using certificates to access the network (specifically EAP-TLS) has long been a solution for differentiating between clients that otherwise have similar context (same user, same device type, same network, same time of day access). Traditionally, using EAP-TLS requires an IT administrator to provision a certificate to a user, get that certificate installed on the device, and configure a supplicant to use that certificate to connect to the network. Just getting the PKI infrastructure in place to issue the certificates can be a daunting challenge for most IT administrators, but often IT runs into a chicken-and-egg problem: They can't get the users onto the network without the certificate, but the user can't get the certificate on their device until they have network access.

This almost always means IT sets up at least 2 SSIDs  one for enrollment and another for secure network access, and often means IT is stuck manually provisioning each and every client accessing the network. This is darn near impossible in this age mobility and BYOD. Imagine getting 1000 iPads in house for electronic textbooks or taking orders at your retail store and having to configure every single one manually with a certificate! It would take a full time employee dedicated to just onboarding devices, not to mention managing them once they're on the network.

Aerohive has found a way to solve this problem of differentiating like clients by allowing administrators to use the cloud-enabled Hivemanager to configure auto-provisioning for clients in much the same manner we already support configuring Aerohive access points, routers, and switches. The administrator can create policies that get pushed to HiveOS devices that apply network permissions to the clients based on the identity of the user, device type, ownership of the device (BYOD or Issued), location, and time of day. The Aerohive Cloud Services Platform will issue a certificate to connecting users in real-time based on all available context, and then apply policies dynamically based on that information.

If that wasn't enough, HiveManager now also has the ability to apply device-specific configuration settings to the connected clients, such as passcode restrictions, email and VPN configuration parameters, and even some basic application access restrictions, such as disabling camera or cloud-file-sharing access. The best part about this is that it is all integrated into HiveManager within a single workflow — and more importantly — that the user only has to connect to a single SSID and this happens automatically — or more accurately — they get auto-provisioned .

Real-time device information, context-based visibility and management, and easy troubleshooting are table stakes when preparing your network for a mobile-first workforce. Once again, you can look to Aerohive to help make a complex problem simple by using a combination of distributed intelligence, cloud-enabled management, and a little bit of BEE-power. Hive On! 

Snapper is New Zealand’s leading contactless payment system. Providing a secure and convenient alternative to cash payments, Snapper cards, or “Snappers,” enable consumers to make instant everyday purchases across thousands of outlets and services. To date, over 250,000 Snappers have been issued, generating over 50 million transactions across 500 retailers, 1,000 buses and 2,000 taxis in New Zealand.

Transport, in particular, is a key area for Snapper. Its secure cashless payment system has been supporting commuters across the country’s bus links since 2008. Today, the company continues to witness rising demand for its services as organizations and cardholders experience the benefit of Snapper as a secure cash replacement.

Snapper set about sourcing a wireless network solution that would be quick to install, simple to manage and easily scale to future requirements as its business operations grew. It needed the network to be efficient, reliable and highly secure due to the constant high volumes of personal, financial data travelling over the network.

Although other wireless vendors were considered, Snapper chose Aerohive’s technology based on a successful pilot at one of its depots. Snapper evaluated the technology based on key criteria including ease of configurability, security, efficiency, resiliency, cost and analysis capability — all critical factors were met during the pilot. Aerohive’s Wi-Fi architecture provides Snapper with mission critical reliability, granular security controls and the ability to start small and scale without technical or cost limitations.

Read the full case study here.

In this whiteboard video, you'll learn how Aerohive's TeacherView classroom wireless access application gives teachers a very simple way to view their students' Wi-Fi connection status in a classroom. Please check out this video to learn more about TeacherView.

We are profiling the entire Aerohive training team, one-by-one. First up: Metka Dragos.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Because I manage Aerohive’s social channels, and our HiveNation community, and our HiveMind blog, I have the distinct honor and privilege of watching a steady flow of compliments paid to our training team. Pretty much the minute a training class has been completed, and a certification earned, it starts: The Internet erupts with Tweets and posts from student-customers singing the praises of our talented instructors.

Their popularity could be because Aerohive is the only WLAN company in which the entire training team is Certified Wireless Network Experts(CWNE’s).

David Coleman: CWNE #4

Metka Dragos:   CWNE #23

Bryan Harkins:  CWNE #44

Gregor Vucjnk:  CWNE #96

But it’s more than that. It’s about the people behind the projector, know what I mean?

This blog, the first in a series of five, introduces our training team, one by one (but in no particular order). These are the folks who go the extra mile to teach our customers. In fact, the “travel fun fact” section will give you an idea of how far the training team will go to educate Aerohive customers.

~~~~~~~~

#1 Metka Dragos: Metka is a Sr. Technical Trainer at Aerohive and has more than twenty years of experience in the IT industry and delivering training programs. Her corporate career includes positions in Application Programming, Database Administration, System Administration and Network Engineering. Experience gained from these positions, years of mentoring and certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and CWNP give her a unique blend of real life and classroom scenarios that she passionately shares with her students. Metka is also CWNE #23.

Why does Metka love teaching for Aerohive?“It gives me an incredible opportunity to show people the great products that are the results of innovative minds and hard work of all the people in this company from engineers to support.”

Who loves Metka? “Metka Dragos is the best trainer in the business.” – (Member post via the HiveNation community)

Travel Fun Fact:“In the 6 months since starting with Aerohive, I have traveled coast to coast (in coach) 14 times.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other profiles in our training team blog series: 

Introducing Aerohive's incredible Training Team (Part III): Bryan Harkins

For the last few years, Aerohive has been touting the amazing opportunities provided by "Cloud Enabled Networking" to enhance our already awesome Cooperative Control access points, routers, and switches. You get instant-on, unlimited scalability, built-in resiliency, and most importantly — it's so EASY. Buy one AP, and the setup is simple, straightforward, and follows a coherent workflow. Buy 10,000 and you still get the same simple setup and ease-of-deployment that makes deploying thousands of access points, routers, or switches as easy as that first one. 

You also get reassurance that the cooperative control functionality built into HiveOS will scale securely since the devices all work together to provide a completely resilient and high- performance networking solution. Sounds amazing, right? No wonder we're taking the enterprise networking market by storm . 

In the past couple months, though, I've run into quite a few potential customers at trade shows or customer visits that say to me, "Oh, Aerohive — the cloud controller company." 

I try not to wince when I hear that, but truly, it's all I can do not to cry a little! I guess first of all, props to our competitors for making the world believe you can't have truly scalable enterprise-class Wi-Fi without a controller. Even though we've seen most of them come out with some form of controller-less functionality in the past year, most will quickly offer the controller solution as the "enterprise class" option as soon as the deal reaches a certain size or prestige. I guess that's the name of the game when 40% (or more) of revenue is dependent on this box Aerohive keeps saying isn't necessary.  So I dry my tear(s), and set to work explaining network management versus a controller. 

Cloud-managed vs. cloud-controlled

So what is the difference? If a company has a cloud-based management option, does that make it the same as Aerohive's Cooperative Control Cloud-Enabled solution? I guess this is where the rubber hits the road. Or the money is where our mouth is. Or where the pope cuts down a tree… oops. No more metaphors.

The question you have to ask yourself is — what do you lose if access to the cloud portion of the solution goes down? If the answer is "nothing," you have cloud-enabled networking. If the answer includes any of these: "Captive Web Portal, Layer 3 Roaming, Radio Auto-tuning, Active Directory integration … " Well, no matter how "green" the solution is, it isn't cloud enabled. It's cloud-dependent.

If the solution has to rely on an external device, even if it's hidden in a cloud service, inside a switch or router blade, or just hanging out as an expensive paperweight — to make decisions about what happens at the very edge of the network, you have a controller solution.

And we've seen from leading analyst firms that controllers don't and can't possibly scale for the future of Wi-Fi. I mean, we know 11ac is rapidly coming down the pipe with predicted speeds of 1.3Gbps, but what about 11ad where we're talking 7Gbps/client or MORE? Your edge needs to be intelligent and make real-time decisions in order to scale. 

The internet doesn't have a single point of failure or a central "controller," and neither should you. But don't just take my word for it — test it. Set up an Aerohive solution. Turn off access to HiveManager (you could technically even use our APs or routers with a firewall policy to block access if you wanted to get creative .

Whether you go with our HiveManager Online or our on-premises solution, the network will continue to operate as normal. Your captive web portals will work, your AD authentication (or OD, LDAP, or eDirectory to be precise) will continue to authenticate users, and your users will never, ever know that access to the management system was impacted.

So you can use the cloud to make managing your network easier, but you don't have to depend on the cloud to make your network work. And that's the beauty of cloud-ENABLED cooperative control networking, and why Aerohive is the cat's meow. The cherry on the sundae. Or maybe just the bee's knees. HiveOn.  

~~~~~~~

Want to read more on cloud networking? Check out these blogs by Manish Desai.

• What is cloud networking?
• Hybrid cloud: Best of both worlds
• Why the cloud is superior to yesterday’s bundles
• Cloud Model In, Upfront License Fees Out
• Cloud-managed vs. Cloud-controlled Wi-Fi: What’s the difference?
• How to choose between a private or public cloud deployment
• Public or private cloud: Which one is best?
• Flexible cloud services upgrade policy to meet your schedule 
• What is Cloud Networking? The Next Wave of Cloud Services 

Second in a five-part series: We are profiling the entire Aerohive training team, one-by-one. This installation introduces Gregor Vučajnk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Because I manage Aerohive’s social channels, and our HiveNation community, and our HiveMind blog, I have the distinct honor and privilege of watching a steady flow of compliments paid to our training team. Pretty much the minute a training class has been completed, and a certification earned, it starts: The Internet erupts with Tweets and posts from student-customers singing the praises of our talented instructors.

Their popularity is in part because Aerohive is the only WLAN company in which the entire training team is Certified Wireless Network Experts (CWNE’s).

David Coleman: CWNE #4

Metka Dragos:   CWNE #23

Bryan Harkins:  CWNE #44

Gregor Vučajnk : CWNE #96

But it’s more than that. It’s about the people behind the projector, know what I mean?

This blog, the second in a series of five, introduces our training team, one by one (but in no particular order). These are the folks who go the extra mile to teach our customers. In fact, the “travel fun fact” section will give you an idea of how far the training team will go to educate Aerohive customers.

~~~~~~~~

Gregor Vučajnk : Gregor is the EMEA / International Training Manager for Aerohive where he is part of a global team delivering Aerohive instructor led training. Prior to joining Aerohive, Gregor was an independent Wi-Fi professional, and a contractor for several Wi-Fi vendorsand end customers. He has been working as a professional services expert for several vendors and his client references include fortune 500 companies. 

meet hundreds of people across the world and keep in contact with many of them. I love my job.”

Introducing Aerohive's incredible Training Team: Metka Dragos 

Introducing Aerohive's incredible Training Team (Part III): Bryan Harkins

• Define unlimited number of retail stores or landmarks
• Browse visitor traffic
• Obtain engagement and loyalty metrics
• Compare stores
• View historical information
• Share data and understand the power of retail analytics

• Aerohive is the only vendor that offers Euclid Analytics integrated into the HiveManager management system. No other vendor has developed this level of integration with the Euclid solution.  
• Euclid’s free version provides extensive functionality of any competing Wi-Fi analytics system available today; the paid version is even more advanced.
• Aerohive’s controller-less architecture simplifies analytics deployment as there is no need for a controller and thereby, reducing retailer costs
• Euclid Analytics can be consumed either through the HiveManager interface or via Euclid’s standard dashboard. 
• Customers can create unlimited user accounts so the power of Euclid Analytics can be shared across the entire organization.

Healthcare organizations primarily deploy Wi-Fi networking to provide guest access to the Internet and other non-critical internal resources. With the advent of the mobile-first workforce, the trend is shifting: Now, many organizations are using Wi-Fi to support critical patient care applications, provide mobile capabilities for care providers, and enable wireless clinical monitoring and tracking devices — all while ensuring patient privacy and confidential data is adequately protected and meets HIPAA compliance mandates. 

Healthcare IT faces daunting challenges. Decisions must be made about how access to computing resources now will affect efficiency and effectiveness in years to come.

Top considerations for optimizing your network for mobility:

These five tips highlight the benefits of a mobile-first healthcare organization and the advantages of characterizing the requirements granularly to enable a modern Wi-fi network for years to come.

1) Design around application access and users, not the network

Designing and optimizing network access for mobility is a key aspect of servicing critical healthcare applications and ensuring resources meet scale. Essentially, the important part is deploying a network infrastructure that is acutely cognizant and optimized for application access and user context (user privilege, device type, location and time).

2) Converge wired and wireless management tools

Approaching the overall network with a true single-pane-of-glass view with converged wired, wireless and security management transforms the way health IT administrators view, monitor and manage the entire access network infrastructure. With application visibility and control over performance thrown-in, empowered IT admins will impersonate Captain Kirk of Star Trek in ensuring the near optimal usage and up-time of all resources.

3) Implement proper security policies for guest and BYOD

Mobile devices in healthcare access critical applications in a variety of ways. Many access with a software agent installed on a laptop, or through hosted virtual desktops, or from tablets like iPads through plain web browsers. And the device could belong to the corporation or employee. Implement user-centric policies with proper virtual local area network (VLAN) assignment, application quality of service policy based on the user and proper authentication, including legacy certificate-based authentication.

4) Optimize wireless connectivity

Neighboring Wi-Fi devices and other sources can affect wireless local area network (WLAN) availability and interfere with users’ ability to use the network. These sources can include medical equipment, guest devices, neighboring organizations with wireless networks, and any equipment that emits energy in the Wi-Fi bands, such as microwave ovens and wireless surveillance cameras.

Advanced WLANs have sophisticated radio frequency management tools that can automatically detect interference, dynamically adjust power levels, and switch channels to sidestep congestion. Some vendors also have strong radio frequency planning tools to select optimal locations for access points and avoid interference once deployed. However, because radio frequency environments continually change, it is far more efficient to automate the network to self-adjust and self-heal in the presence of interference and failures.

5) Extending mobile-first architecture benefits into the future

Deploying a modern Wi-Fi network with a granular visible management platform, optimizing for productivity and flexibility and meeting security mandates is a great starting point for any healthcare organization. If you spend one dollar to buy and deploy a technology solution, many times it takes three dollars to maintain it annually. Establishing break-fix remediation best practices by leveraging solution tools like centralized troubleshooting, service tools to isolate network issues from device issues (especially from those pesky consumer-grade mobile devices) and an ability to extend IT policies for new users will ensure a mobility platform built to last.

Third in a five-part series: We are profiling the entire Aerohive training team, one-by-one. This installation introduces Bryan Harkins.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Because I manage Aerohive’s social channels, and our HiveNation community, and our HiveMind blog, I have the distinct honor and privilege of watching a steady flow of compliments paid to our training team. Pretty much the minute a training class has been completed, and a certification earned, it starts: The Internet erupts with Tweets and posts from student-customers singing the praises of our talented instructors.

Their popularity is in part because Aerohive is the only WLAN company in which the entire training team is Certified Wireless Network Experts (CWNE’s).

David Coleman: CWNE #4

Metka Dragos:   CWNE #23

Bryan Harkins:  CWNE #44

Gregor Vučajnk : CWNE #96

But it’s more than that. It’s about the people behind the projector, know what I mean?

This blog, the third in a series of five, introduces our training team, one by one (but in no particular order). These are the folks who go the extra mile to teach our customers. In fact, the “travel fun fact” section will give you an idea of how far the training team will go to educate Aerohive customers.

~~~~~~~~

Bryan Harkins: Bryan is the Training and Courseware Development Manager for Aerohive Networks. Prior to joining Aerohive, he was the Training and Development Manager for Motorola’s AirDefense Solutions. Bryan creates and delivers technical training for both live and computer based learning. He has worked on Wi-Fi projects from single AP SOHO deployments to vast enterprise deployments with multinational locations.

Bryan was a wireless consultant, one of only seven Certified Wireless Solutions Providers in Georgia, and a technical trainer. He has spoken at Secure World Expo; participated in security panels, and conducted wireless security workshops for the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association Symposium and the Tactical C4 conference. Bryan was the highest rated instructor for one of the world’s largest training companies for several consecutive years. His industry certifications include: MCT, MCSE, MCSE+S, MCSA, MCSA+S , A+, Net+, I-Net+, Server+, Security+, CIWA, CIWSA, CIWSP, CWNA, CWSP, CWAP, CWNT, CWNE, ACT, ACE, WVA, ACA,ACM, ACWA and ACWP. Bryan is the author of the PrepLogic practice test for the CWNA exam, Co-Author of the Sybex CWSP study guide, Author of the Sybex CWNA and CWSP Ancillary guides, as well as the Technical Editor of the Sybex CWTS study guide. He has also been the Subject Matter Expert for both Microsoft Touch Point and Broad Reach events.

Why does Bryan love teaching about Aerohive?“The reasons I like teaching for Aerohive are vast. The most distinctive is that the products are innovative and disruptive in the industry. No one does what we do.”

Who loves Bryan?“Learned a lot at @Aerohive essentials training this week. @80211University [aka Bryan Harkins] is a phenomenal instructor. I will be installing these @wofcic!” – From Twitter

Travel Fun Fact: “In the last year I have been on the road between 40 and 45 weeks, in 7 different countries acquiring 10's of 1,000's of miles, in coach. As I write this I am in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “(Editor’s note: “In coach” is a big deal when you are 6'6" and are stuck there for hours on end. Editor’s other note about the camel photo: Bryan is often the man behind the lens when it comes to employee photos, but this time he was the subject.)

Introducing Aerohive's incredible Training Team (Part 1): Metka Dragos 

Introducing Aerohive's incredible Training Team (Part II): Gregor Vucajnk

Next up: RozRissler

• Already have an AerohiveBEE? Visit the Where's the Bee thread on our community.

• Post a photo of your #AerohiveBEE in action as a reply to that thread, and also tell us in one sentence, "Why enterprise Wi-Fi is strategic to your organization."

• The contest begins today and ends Friday, Sept. 27, 2013.

• One drawing per week during the contest dates (winner gets a Bee Copter).

• You can submit as many photos of the bee as you want.

• One raffle ticket per photo posted on the community.

• One Bee Copter raffle win per contestant.

• As a Grand Finale, we will hold a vote on the community on Sept 27th in which we judge the Top 3 best photos chosen by the community manager. The community will then vote on the best one of the three. Whichever photo gets the most stars, wins. The winner gets an iPad Mini!

• You are free (and encouraged!) to tweet a photo of your bee using the #AerohiveBEE hashtag, but you must post your photo on the Where's the BEE community thread as a reply to get your raffle ticket for the drawings.

• Important: Please be appropriate– offensive photos will be removed immediately!

The use of cloud services continues to rise. In order to understand how enterprises are adopting cloud services, Aerohive Networks recently surveyed 200 enterprise IT professionals.

This infographic sums up the key findings from that survey. Among those findings, 90% of IT professionals are investigating, implementing, or maintaining a cloud service today.  

(For better resolution, please click the image to view the pdf)

The Scottish Midland Co-operative Society Ltd., also known as Scotmid, needed a single wireless LAN solution capable of meeting the needs of three locations – warehouse, headquarters, and retail stores. Scotmid includes more than 260 retail stores, as well as more than 130 Semichem stores offering health and beauty supplies throughout the UK. The co-op also manages a funeral services division and a commercial and residential property division.

In the warehouse, inventory changes occur almost daily. The new wireless LAN would need to accommodate the changing environment, allowing pickers to roam freely throughout the warehouse without interference or connectivity issues. The WLAN would also need to be resilient to prevent costly downtime. While a Wi-Fi solution was an immediate requirement for the warehouse, Scotmid also recognized the need for wireless technology to support future applications at other locations as well. These included the co-op’s modern, three-story headquarters building and its retail stores. What Scotmid wanted was a single wireless LAN solution capable of meeting the needs of all three of these very different environments.

Scotmid liked Aerohive’s controller-less architecture because it reduced traffic, and because Aerohive’s Access Points are easy to install, easy to manage and cost-effective.

Read the full case study here.