How Wi-Fi as a Service Emerged From PowerCloud

It all started at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a place where ideas sprung out of the Xerox company, usually to be thrown in the bin or given to someone else, as was the case with the modern Internet and the personal computer. PowerCloud was a company that started its infancy there.

“The business model that PowerCloud had had for several years was actually to be the technology behind other brands... we never had a brand of our own [in the past],” said Jeff Abramowitz, CEO and founder of PowerCloud.

Shortly after being founded, the company has become one of the biggest providers of cloud-managed networking device software for manufacturers. Now, PowerCloud is in the middle of a transformation, with the goal of becoming a company that sells technologies to vertical markets through its own brand, as opposed to targeting networking OEMs.

PowerCloud is currently making its own wireless gear, which will account for indoor and outdoor networking through Wi-Fi. Eventually, it will become a brand name that enterprises and verticals (like retail and hospitality) rely on for networking purposes. Its strategy is to make a Network-as-a-Service offering that solution providers will remember in the long run.

“The idea we had was this notion of tying the cloud to networking infrastructure and to infuse networking products with powerful features and functionality from the cloud, simplifying capabilities to set up networking infrastructures, and then ultimately being able to deliver applications over networking infrastructures,” said Abramowitz. “That is the way the industry has gone, so the good news there is that we set out with the right vision.”

The company is confident that its technologies will provide very good sales numbers for managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) of traditional networking products who want to improve their services.

PowerCloud also has plans to introduce something known as Wi-Fi-as-a-Service, which basically allows people to create private networks within an access point. The solution is called TenantWiFi and will target multitenant buildings, such as hospitals and malls. This will allow stores within a mall, for example, to create their own networks within the public Wi-Fi infrastructure of the building.