DMR: So the network infrastructure business is accelerating towards a more software driven model. Is that your experience as well? Is more and more intelligence going into Cloud? Are we now seeing the next generation Network-as-a-Service or something like that emerging? 

Paul Curto: I think that’s definitely an emerging trend. There’s a company called Meraki who used to be the MIT Roofnet Project. They have kind of a mesh-based architecture, but it is more about the business model that’s innovative. They have kind of a pay-as-you-go type of a service that is managed in the Cloud. More recently, you can also take our AirWave product, which is our multi-vendor network management tool. Aruba purchased AirWave back in early 2008. They were one of the very few tools out there that did multi-vendor wireless network management.

Just for scalability discussion: Cisco’s largest wireless [Local Area Network] deployment is the New York Department of Education. And Cisco’s largest wireless [Local Area Network] network is managed by AirWave. That provides an indication of how well AirWave has done in terms of integration and terms of the features and ease-of-use that customers require to manage other networks.  

AirWave has come out with a new service called AirWave-on-Demand. We had beta trial last year running where basically the custumers would simply sign up at airwave.com and they would – with the signed beta agreement –copy and paste their [Virtual Private Network] setup that they were given into their controller and login to their personalized AirWave site, so everything is basically managed in the Cloud. And AirWave has their management platform. They have this software module called “Virtual RF” which is a [Radio Frequency] virtualization and location services. And they have a tool called “RAPIDS”, which is a rogue [Access Point] detection and [Intrusion Detection System] event management tool. What this allows customers to do is deploy AirWave without the need to buy any servers, instal any software, or worry about power, cooling, maintenance; they don’t have to install any software patches or upgrades, or worry about backups. It is a pay-as-you-go-service. Start using it and see if it meets your needs. And also, if your desire is eventually to have an AirWave server: there is an entry barrier to some customers, especially smaller customers who don’t necessarily want to buy a server and host it themselves. They are starting small with this pay-as-you-go cloud-based service and then eventually convert it to a service that they host and manage themselves, without losing any historical data. So it’s a pretty cool tool and the service has just launched recently. All you really need is a [Virtual Private Network] connection back to the AirWave hosted location from your network where you have, let’s say, an Aruba controller that is [Simple Network Management Protocol] deployed.