December 2011
1 post
“Good Enough.” or “Give Me More!” – That’s the...
Every Wi-Fi vendor claims to be able to do everything these days. ”Can your system debug my client-side driver issues and fix them on the fly?” “Sure!” Oy.
First, let’s separate between lie and marketing exaggeration…
1) Lie - a vendor doesn’t have it, and they say they do.
2) Marketing - a vendor calls their feature by the same name as other...
November 2011
1 post
American Express: Only For Use In America
Here’s how it went down. When I got off the plane in Sweden, I connected to Wi-Fi and received an email from American Express saying that there was a suspected fraudulent charge on my card and that I should contact them via phone as soon as possible. I stopped right there in the Airport and did just that. One HOUR later, I had been assure that my card had been cancelled and a new one was...
October 2011
4 posts
Dear Grandma: The Bulls & The Bees, Part II
Dear Grandma,
I thought you might be curious as to why all that stuff about the bulls and the bees matters. I told you the “what”, but I thought I’d write you another letter briefly explaining the “why.”
Why It Matters
There’s a long list of reasons why it matters, and some of them are hard to draw parallels to things you might understand, but I’ll give a few of them a try.
Scalability,...
Dear Grandma: The Bulls & The Bees, Part I
Dear Grandma,
Since the last time I dropped by the farm for biscuits and honey you asked me what makes Aerohive so special and why I travel around the world yacking on and on about it. I hope this letter helps you to understand that I’m not a loon.
What Our Competitors Do
Our competitors build a wireless networking system, half of which is a bit like Grandpa’s prized bull Apollo. It’s a giant,...
Mastering The Mental Game
So my 12 year old daughter Abbey plays golf. I mean, she REALLY plays golf. She’s been playing for just over a year, and she’s already firing bogey golf from the women’s tees. She’s a 5 foot pencil, but piping her tee-box go-to- 3-wood an average of 200 yards, she hits it long enough to where we’re about to back her up to the shortest men’s tees. ...
Hitting It PHAT
Today I was playing golf with my friend Steve. We were on a par 3 at a course neither of us had ever played, neither of us endangering the course record. We were paired with this guy John. John was a really nice guy and a pretty decent golfer. He was easily keeping pace with our …umm… hacking. Steve and I were talking about my Miura irons, as he’s looking to snag some CB-202...
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
3 posts
Discounting Stupidness: Part II (Let the Cryning...
A typical Mfr/VAR discounting relationship ranges from 10-35% depending on the VAR’s partner level and the type of product being sold (access points, management platform, support services, professional services, etc). These are not Aerohive’s exact numbers, so please don’t think that’s what I’m saying. If you’re interested in being an Aerohive VAR, we have a...
Discounting Stupidness: Part I (Giving Some...
During my tenure at Aerohive, I’ve learned alot about how pricing structures work, from how “COGS compares to List” to how “one-tier in Market-A” compares to “two-tier in Market-B.” It’s a complicated, ever-changing mess to be sure. The part that borders on stupidness is what I would like to discuss in this blog: discounting.
I would like to offer...
September 2010
1 post
Upcoming webcast with Craig Mathias! SWEET! :) →
August 2010
5 posts
Only in Bremen
The Grand Re-opening of the Bremen, GA Walmart. Not the opening. No, that only had a band playing and the mayor speaking. This is the “Grand Re-opening”, and before 8am on a hot-as-hell August Friday morning in little Bremen, GA, the local Walmart had in attendance: 1) The GA National Guard 2) A DJ with a fondness for Bon Jovi and giant pair of speakers 3) Local country music...
The Ripple Effect Continues...
So, I thought I had it all worked out. All finished. Just when you think you have it whooped, somebody changes the rules. Holy crap. So, my wife’s phone went to Hannah (Blackberry Bold 9000), my old Blackberry Bold 9000 went to Abbey, and I had them all configured and working…until…my Bold’s scroller ball croaked. Of course it isn’t under warranty, so I had to...
Death by Smartphone
I have to warn you now, that this blog has little-to-nothing to do with how Aerohive is putting the smack down in the Wi-Fi industry. :) If you have spare time to read my misc (because I don’t know how to spell the whole word) ramblings on Smartphone transition, and/or have ever had an iPhone or a Blackberry, this blog is for you. Or maybe it isn’t. So I’m a big fan of...
July 2010
1 post
June 2010
17 posts
Horry County Joins The Hive! →
Tethering Your Blackberry: It's Simple, Cheap, and... →
Location-based Coupons
I’ve read several times, and talked to a number of folks recently about location-based coupons. Some of these are tied to GPS location and others are tied to Wi-Fi hotspots. Apparently this is a lucrative business. Unexpected.
Because that's how we roll! →
A Company To Avoid - Dollar/Thrifty Car Rental
I’ve rented cars from Dollar/Thrifty many times in the past, but recently, when renting a car from the Dollar/Thrifty at Little Rock Arkansas airport, I had the worst experience of my life. I left a GPS in the car, and even after calling back immediately, they refused to help me in any way. I have spoken to 2 managers, Tom and Mario, who both lied to my face about trying to find it and...
I just love working with British people
British people are always so funny, logical, and reasonable. It’s like working with Vulcans on sniffing glue. :) The back-n-forth discussions are always so calm and professional.
Easy of Configuration
These days, many Silicon Valley startups have many employees from either India or China. The reason: they’re really smart, and they work really hard. Something I aspire to myself. Sometimes there’s a bit of a language barrier…you might’ve experienced this if you’ve ever worked in the Valley. Some folks can write perfect English, and some are much better at...
Watched an IMAX movie called Arabia in Atlanta
I took my family to an IMAX film at Fernbank in Atlanta this weekend, and the “religious” part of that film was just like what Aerohive experiences every day: someone stealing your messaging. :) Some dude in that film said something like Christianity, Islam, and Jewish faiths are interlinked and then basically insinuated that they were all the same because they all split apart...
Anything less than controller-less probably has...
Strategy is 99.9% Execution
Accountability Through Social Media
One aspect of social media that I really like is the accountability of it all. If you give someone a line of BS or just have a general lack of integrity in your marketing, people will call you on it…and it will ripple through hundreds or even thousands of people. I think that’s fantastic. I think it’s great that if you lie, you’ll pay. In my CWNP days, I used to do road...
Marcus puts the smack down on the BS! Woot! →
An opinion about the future of Wi-Fi
While some aspects of Wi-Fi have a common future, such as architecture becoming fully-distributed, there are other aspects to be considered as well. I’ve said before that you can’t be everything to everyone or be great at everything, and that’s true of wireless infrastructure as well. So what’s to become of Wi-Fi in the end then? Here’s my highly-opinionated, and...
I thought Juniper wanted to be the Juniper of... →
Blantant dishonesty...Grrr.
Dishonesty makes me want to vomit. I reviewed a competing vendor’s survey that showed that it would take 129 units to cover the facility to -72dBm, and then on the quote in the front of the survey, they priced out only 46 units. Further, they needed more than 275 units to achieve voice grade Wi-Fi, something the customer was expecting, and yet they neglected to mention that their -72dBm...
Farnham sweet Farnham.
I’m in Farnham, Surrey, UK. One would normal believe that “Farnham nightlife” is an oxymoron given that it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s 400 years old, and well, it doesn’t have air conditioning. Two guys, one a comedian, the other an international peace keeper, dragged me to a bar where the comedian fended off metro-sexuals all night and the peacekeeper...
No surprise here. Xirrus has ZERO integrity. →
May 2010
43 posts
Out of the mouth of babes...
Since I was headed to Europe this weekend, and leaving on Sat, my wife let our almost-11-yr-old twins invite over 3 friends EACH. If you’ve never tried it, don’t. Anyway, as I was leaving home, They all decided I was their dad and started hugging me goodbye. Then one of the asked, “where are you going?” That was followed by a somewhat disharmonious, “Yeah! Tell us...
Delayed! (alot)
As if it weren’t bad enough to have a 9pm flight to Paris on Saturday night of a 3-day weekend, it was just delayed until 11:30pm…and even that is still not for sure. Ugh.
Wanna win?
http://www2.aerohive.com/l/1244/2010-03-01/GICU5
We’re giving away free networks…seriously. We’ve already had one winner. Good Luck!
On the road again...
Daughter graduated high school last night, and WHAM…on the road to Europe today. I’ll be in Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam this time around. SWEET.
2010 Wi-Fi Vendor Face-off. Does that mean I... →
Happy birthday to my main man Marcus Burton.
They just don’t come any better than Marcus. He’s a huge addition to the Wi-Fi market at large, and I’m honored to call him friend. I would make up a birthday rhyme, but after thinking about it, I can’t think of a single zoo animal that he reminds me of…well, perhaps that ostrich from FunnyOneLiners on Twitter. :)
My favorite new app. This takes... →
Drobo is king.
I’m getting 400 Mbps like clockwork, and my old LaCie could only do 130Mbps. You have to love SATA2 RAID.
Devinator gets edgy :) →
Drobo-FS rocks. Installed and servin' up the... →
Essential NetTools - It's Cheap, It's Useful. ... →
WaveDeploy launches. SWEET. →
A lose/lose situation that's a win for their... →
2010 Webtorials Challenge
http://www.webtorials.com/content/2010/05/2010-80211n.html
Steve and Joanie did a great job with this. When you read it, notice how everyone is trying to tout themselves as fully distributed (except Cisco), though everyone still needs a centralized controller for control-plane functions. No controller = minimal (or no) Wi-Fi functionality. Some day all vendors will be fully distributed...
Aerohave? :)
A new word from my good friend Roy at Nextel (Netherlands). Reminds me of the “Got Milk?” commercials. Our VP of Marketing suggested that there are two kinds of people:
* The Aerohaves
* The Aerohave-nots
:D