Cambium Goes Cloud

Great news for Wireless ISPs and users of multipoint wireless: Cambium is taking it to the cloud!
On a webinar this morning, Cambium Networks announced their Wi-Fi portfolio, but that was only half the story; they've made some pretty big changes. Introducing cnMaestro.

By pushing all of the management to the cloud, they give the customer or operator an easier way to manage all the components of their network. This is great for an industry that definitely needs it. Now, there's no word on when all things Cambium will be managed by this tool, cnMaestro, but it's getting there :) Their words: "cnMaestro will be replacing all of Cambium's Management systems."

So let's dig in to it:

There is a fancy automated provisioning tool that is used to drop-ship client Wi-Fi devices straight to the customer. Pretty-slick.


They stepped this up by allowing the complete end-to-end management of products: From basestation/ap, to the subscriber unit, to the AP level. As a former WISP builder and someone who tries to stay close to that industry, I think this is tremendous news. The Dude, eat your heart out.




To that note, integrated hotspot capabilities included in the AP, the ability to support APIs, and northbound interfaces can turn this into a great revenue generator for existing ISPs. That's how you get a WISPs attention: figure out how to make them more money using existing infrastructure! Take that Ubiquiti!



As far as the features and capabilities of the equipment, there's nothing really special going on here. They look like standard 802.11ac and N access points. The PoE will be standard 802.3af.
One way they are sweetening this up is by providing Wi-Fi planning tools (no screenshot yet) to assist with your deployments.

So what does it cost?

Please note, as of right now there will be no charge for the cloud control and management system.

And when will be available?

Tried to write this in real time, so I hope it's not to disjointed :)