In the world of tech, there has long been a near-religious debate about how to gain more value from developed software.
I mean, let's face it: with the readily available components and amazing advances in platform technology in the past decade (or maybe just Moore's Law), hardware platforms are very rarely the distinguishing feature in the decision to pick one vendor over another. Especially in the Wi-Fi world where pretty much the entire vendor pool picks from two major radio chipsets, the actual platform is just a commodity.
The real value, the real reason to choose one company over another, is in the most precious thing a vendor can supply: software.
Software defines a company's success or failure. It defines architecture - for example, cooperative control versus controller, flow-based forwarding versus stateless ACLs, and when to rely on embedded ASICs versus using the CPU. Software also defines performance, functionality, and yes, value. So when companies try to figure out how to monetize that value for whatever drives them (more money to invest in additional platforms and software, shareholder returns, M&A options, etc), there are a few different mindsets that have emerged.
The first is feature licenses.
There were likely other companies who pioneered this idea, but the one that always comes to mind for me as the epitome of relying on feature licenses to maximize value was a company called CheckPoint.
CheckPoint had a basic firewall product that provided awesome object-based rule sets for 25 users. If you wanted 50 users, you bought another license. If you wanted VPN functionality, you bought another license. 802.1X? License. You get the idea. This was basic "I'm setting up a firewall and need to do xxxx" functionality, not additional products like their later-added Antivirus capabilities or DLP. Those are actually separate software packages. More on that in a bit.
It's important to note that Feature licenses aren't bad. They don't make a product not work or work slower or anything that would make feature licenses inherently awful. The problem isn't in functionality, it's in time-to-value and especially in renewals - try wrapping your head around co-term license renewals for 100 firewalls that were installed over the course of a year with different functionality on them. It takes a pivot table and a lot of patience.
So anyway, speaking of CheckPoint, when a certain high-level engineer left the company and joined a competing new security company which some of you may remember as "NetScreen", he said it was for, among other reasons, one important one: No feature licenses.
NetScreen made a name for itself as the first zone-based firewall and relied on the ease of installation and time-to-value to quickly entrench itself as one of the premier security companies in the Bay Area. Customers could enjoy frictionless access to everything from flow-based firewalling, advanced NAT, and yes, route and policy-based VPN policies.
For those of you who don't remember NetScreen, maybe take a look at the billion-dollar IPO or $4B dollar sale to Juniper as an example of how valuable that frictionless time-to-value really is.
Even at NetScreen, though, additional software packages did cost money: for example, adding anti-spam or anti-virus via partners like WebSense or Kaspersky required a subscription for that service. Just because it was integrated into the product didn't mean it was a basic feature or always included for free.
So that brings us to the crux of the matter, which is how to distinguish a basic feature from an additional software package.
As you can probably deduce by now, many of us who came to Aerohive in the early days were part of the NetScreen pedigree. Our founder, his staff of distinguished engineers and a certain product manager, maintained that customers should be able to go from Zero to Deployed with all necessary features for an enterprise-quality Wi-Fi network. This included (taking some creative license here with timeline for available functionality ;-): multiple SSIDs, QoS, Firewall, Spectrum Analysis for troubleshooting, WIPS, and yes, even VPN.
Add to that even more value that Aerohive has developed over the years, such as Private Pre-Shared Key, Application Visibility and Control, API partnerships with premier companies like AirWatch and Ekahau, and embedded RADIUS with directory integration, and you can start to see a pattern: As users get more mobile, more functionality is required to qualify as "enterprise class Wi-Fi", and Aerohive has pioneered features and products to provide that value to customers with the price of a HiveOS device and our management service, HiveManager.
Now you may be shaking your head and thinking "Aerohive does have additional licenses available on the price list." And to that, I'd like to say, "No". We have additional software subscriptions available for our customers as we work to provide more value in this ever-advancing world of mobility.
Take ID Manager for example. This is an industry-leading product that eliminates the need for on-premises AAA appliances at every location to register, securely connect, and monitor guest users on the network. It allows a completely non-technical lobby admin or even a guest to register themselves, acquire a PPSK, and deliver the credential by anything from an email to a text to a Twitter DM.
Awesome right? But not a basic feature. Without ID Manager, it is completely possible to create a bunch of PPSKs, print them out on strips or paper or keep them in a spreadsheet and have your front desk admin distribute them as he/she manually checks the guest in.
In addition, when you purchase ID Manager, you buy it as a single SKU as a subscription service for the number of guest users you want to support. It isn't a per-AP purchase and doesn't require a degree in mathematics when you're ready to renew it.
Another example of an additional software product is our Client Manager - this product allows an IT admin to offload the mountain of work it takes to onboard Corporate-Issued or BYO mobile devices, and then use the profile on the device to implement security requirements such as passcodes or restrict in-app purchases.
But the basic functionality that allows an admin to apply different firewall, QoS, tunneling, and other network permissions to devices based on identity, device type, location, and time of day? Free.
Client Manager makes life easier, but it isn't something that a customer must purchase in order to set up a successful Aerohive deployment.
So anyway, with all the hullabaloo out on the Internetz these days, it seemed like a prime time to write this blog. Please find me on twitter @wifi_princess or type your comments below if you have questions.