Today's corporate networks are becoming increasingly complex. With increased mobility and Internet usage, virtualized applications, cloud services, data backup from distributed sites, and security and application updates, the network handles more tasks than ever 
before. The growing number of network endpoints with the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) phenomenon adds to the challenge of effectively deploying and managing a wireless network in today's enterprise. Moreover, lean budgets, geographically distributed deployments and, in some cases, a lack of onsite RF expertise pose additional potential obstacles for network managers.
Enterprise networks today commonly find the following challenges to capacity, density, and aggregate throughput:
- BYOD and mobility
- Increased number of connected ‘things’
- Bandwidth hungry apps
In recent years, alternative architectures have emerged to cope with the performance challenge. Among those alternative architectures are delivery models where control can reside in the cloud or be distributed throughout deployed APs.
IDC’s Technology Spotlight addresses how newer cloud-managed distributed control network architectures, such as those offered by Aerohive, address these challenges as enterprise WLAN use cases become more diverse.