Selecting the Right WLAN Vendor for Your Campus Network in 2024

Market Background

Campus Area Networks (CANs), typically referred to simply as campus networks, are self-contained private networks connecting multiple buildings across a single site with a shared network and common policies. Organizations that rely on campus networks include large enterprises, Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), educational institutions, government facilities, hospitality establishments, retail outlets, large public venues, hospitals, transportation and logistics hubs, and industrial sites. Campus networks contrast with traditional enterprise networks in that they are considerably more complex and consist of many multiple subsections with divergent requirements.

The demands of campuses are also more challenging, including elements such as connectivity traversing indoors and outdoors, long-distance building-to-building connectivity, high scalability, mission-critical use cases, or seamless roaming. These attributes necessitate next-generation solutions and innovations that are optimized specifically toward the requirements of campus environments.

This Research Highlight walks you through the connectivity vendors that ranked as the top innovators and implementers of campus WLAN solutions in ABI Research’s latest competitive assessment. Before that, we’ll review the criteria our analysts used to evaluate a WLAN vendor’s ability to cater to campuses.

WLAN Innovations That Campuses Should Prioritize

Technological Leadership & Influence: Vendors developing leading-edge 802.11 solutions for campus networks will score highly in this WLAN innovation criterion. Such vendors will have evidenced significant product differentiation through 802.11 innovation and are pushing the boundaries of what the technology is capable of. Being at the vanguard of 802.11 innovation often goes hand in hand with influence on developing the technology, so vendors’ contributions to standardization efforts, involvement in technology trials, or participation in industry initiatives will also be considered.

Campus-Specific Innovations: This innovation criterion is an assessment of proprietary technologies that have been designed to meet the demands of campus networks. These solutions do not necessarily have to be cutting-edge and could potentially be existing technologies that have been re-engineered for campus use cases. The key is that these innovations are unique and have been developed with the explicit purpose of effectively addressing campus-related challenges.

Simplicity & Ease of Management: Growing network complexity is raising the need for tools that simplify the management experience for campus operators, and this category will analyze a vendor’s ability to deliver these resources, not only regarding network control, but also in aspects such as network intelligence and scalability. The grading will look favorably upon management platforms that can provide unified control of the network, can support operations with insights, analytics, and automations, and those that are seamlessly scalable. Innovations made to support Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in managing the campus networks of their clients will also be considered.

IoT & Cellular Technology Integration: A successful integration of WLAN with the Internet of Things (IoT) or 5G hinges on the ability to ensure that the integration is frictionless, and that the advantages of multiple technologies can be effectively leveraged to resolve campus challenges. A vendor scoring highly in this field can demonstrate its ability to provide unified and centralized management of the integrated technologies and can highlight innovative use cases for which the converged solutions are applied.

Services & Applications for Campus: Additional value-added services on top of platforms, such as location-based services or digital twins, can unlock new abilities that support the operations of campus networks. Such services may be included within product licenses or can be sold separately via application marketplaces. The final criterion in the innovation section will assess the provision of such services by WLAN vendors, with a focus on those that have been engineered specifically for campus networks. Vendors scoring highly will be those with especially innovative services optimized for delivering campus optimizations or addressing campus-specific challenges.

Top Three Innovators of Campus WLAN

#1: Huawei

The top innovator in this competitive assessment is Huawei. There are countless examples of Huawei leading innovation in the field of WLAN, including that it was one of the first to bring Wi-Fi 7 to market, and that it developed Wi-Fi 6-Advanced, which incorporates additional features not found in the official IEEE standard. But what really helped differentiate Huawei from the competition its campus-targeted innovations and solution optimization, such as:

• iMaster NCE-Campus platform, which has been optimized specifically for operating and maintaining campus networks.
• CloudCampus 3.0, which introduced a new campus architecture designed to reduce network complexity and latency, alongside increasing flexibility and scalability.

#2: Cisco

Second place for innovation has been awarded to Cisco, exerting a major influence on the direction of WLAN technological development and introducing into its portfolio numerous unique innovations that have brought considerable performance improvements to WLANs in campus settings. Examples include Fastlane+, ClearAir, Zero Wait Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS), and Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul (URWB). The latter of these, alongside the Cisco Industrial Wireless product range, uniquely enables Cisco to serve campus environments with mission-critical applications that cannot tolerate downtime.

#3: HPE Aruba Networking

HPE Aruba Networking secured third place for innovation in this assessment. HPE Aruba Networking has developed an extensive WLAN AP portfolio with options for virtually all campus environments into which it incorporates a range of proprietary technologies for improving performance in campus, such as AirMatch and Open Locate. The hardware is backed up by the advanced HPE Aruba Networking Central network management platform, and the Aruba Edge Services Platform (ESP), an industry-leading, AI-powered, and cloud-native platform built on AIOps, zero-trust network security, and a unified campus branch infrastructure. HPE Aruba Networking also demonstrates innovation leadership in several important fields, including Wi-Fi/cellular convergence.

ABI Research would love to hear about your experience with campus WLAN solutions. Speak with an analyst to discuss more.

Campus WLAN Implementation Factors

Fulfillment of Next-Generation Campus Demands: Rapid increases in client density, higher performance requirements, growing demand for roaming, and the introduction of new ultra-high reliability applications are just some of the trends with which next-generation campus networks must grapple. This criterion assesses a vendor’s capacity to satisfy these advanced performance demands, and whether they can support Information Technology (IT) departments and MSPs in delivering the guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) necessary for modern campus Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Business & Service Model Innovation: Accelerating technological innovation, growing network complexity, shrinking IT budgets, and challenges in sourcing qualified network engineers are straining the ability of businesses and public sector bodies globally to manage campus WLAN networks. WLAN vendors will also be graded on their ability to support their customers in facing these challenges with innovative business and service models, including implementing Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) or Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) packages.

Campus Vertical Coverage: Campus networks are used in an extensive range of different industries, each of which poses its own unique and distinct requirements. Key sectors include traditional enterprises, SMBs, education, government, hospitality, retail, large public venues, healthcare, and industrial. On account of the differing strategies of ecosystem vendors, high-scoring vendors in this category will either have a broad breadth of vertical coverage or can demonstrate leadership in their target vertical(s).

Overall Value Proposition: This criterion grades the complete value proposition of a vendor’s solution for campus environments, considering several key factors. The first indicator of a strong value proposition is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) competitiveness and evidence of offering a strong Return on Investment (ROI). A second metric is the ability to provide an End-to-End (E2E) solution for campus networks, delivered either through a vendor’s own proprietary platforms or via strategic partnerships. Also encompassed in this category is support for lifecycle management of the campus network.

Strength of Partnerships: Strategic partnerships are key for both enhancing a vendor’s competitive edge and for executing the go-to-market of products. Therefore, the final category analyzes the relationships that a vendor maintains with third parties, and how effectively it can leverage these partnerships for the needs of campus networks. Examples of strategic partners include MSPs, System Integrators (SIs), hardware component suppliers, or value-added service vendors.

Top Three Implementers of Campus WLANs

#1: Cisco

Cisco was crowned the top implementer in this competitive assessment, a competitiveness reflected by its 28.5% market share of the enterprise WLAN market in 2Q 2023. Although Cisco’s solutions may be some of the most expensive in the industry, it is also viewed as being at the leading-edge technologically, as having solutions to address virtually any business challenge within campus networking, and as offering the ability to create value and deliver good ROI for customers. In recent years, Cisco has invested heavily to improve the implementation for its customers.

#2: Ruckus

Second place for implementation was awarded to CommScope RUCKUS Networks. RUCKUS hardware is highly respected for its performance, reliability, and high cost-efficiency, and offers a highly competitive value proposition for high-density campus environments with unpredictable client behavior. The core network management demands of RUCKUS’ target campus verticals are satisfied through the RUCKUS One platform, and NaaS delivery is facilitated through the highly scalable, multi-tenanted SmartZone controller platform. Its stackable campus switches also help campuses with network scalability and TCO, and the company maintains an expansive network of partners to go-to-market, with 10,000 active channel partners at any one time.

#3: HPE Aruba Networking

Third place for implementation has been conferred to HPE Aruba Networking. The company’s strengths in this domain include a diverse array of solutions for virtually all campus verticals, an industry-leading network management platform, and one of the most comprehensive NaaS offerings in the industry. The company’s success is demonstrated by its large market share of 18.9% in 4Q 2022, and it maintains the largest market share for Wi-Fi 6E enterprise Access Points (APs). HPE Aruba Networking stands out as having one of the most successful NaaS rollouts in the industry, delivered through the HPE GreenLake for Aruba platform, which is integrated with Aruba Central.

Get the Complete Ranking

For the full assessment of 14 WLAN vendors targeting campuses—reviewing their strengths and weaknesses more in-depth—download ABI Research’s WLAN for Campus Area Networks competitive ranking. This research product reveals where each WLAN is positioned in the campus target market and identifies the “why” behind these rankings.

This content is one of our research deliverables that are part of our newly launched WLAN Infrastructure for Campus Networking Research Spotlight.