BrandedLogoDesigns Reviews:Shift into the cloud: manage networks smarter

The management of Access Points and Co. is increasingly migrating into the cloud. Com! Professional shows the strategies of different manufacturers.

Increasingly, network manufacturers are shifting the management of their systems into the cloud, albeit with very different approaches: while Zyxel has developed its own product series for Nebula, according to the name of the system, the other manufacturers usually have an update A current operating system version to manage Access Points and Co. from the cloud.

The manufacturers have also solved the deployment of the systems differently. With Zyxel and Devolo, hosting the management tool is only possible from the public cloud. With Bintec Elmeg and Lancom, system houses have the choice between public and private cloud approaches, so the systems can also be hosted in their own data center or at the customer's premises. This, of course, gives partners a greater degree of flexibility because many companies are still skeptical about the topic of public cloud and are concerned about the protection of their data.

Flexible administration

In principle, the network management from the cloud offers the partners a whole range of advantages: They have a central access to the management and also monitoring of the customer systems, the establishment of VPN connections for the remote maintenance or even the journey to the customer is no longer necessary or is only in exceptional cases necessary. Because a device has to be exchanged, the partner can send the preconfigured device to the customer, which connects it to the network, and the partner can take over the remaining installation steps, if necessary, via the cloud. "Partners thus have a chance to expand the pure product sales with Software as a Service (SaaS)," emphasizes Hans-Dieter Wahl, line management at Bintec Elmeg.

At the same time, however, these systems also provide significantly more comfort in system housings and reduce the error sources during installation. At Nebula from Zyxel, for example, partners can scan the QR code or the MAC address on the device via App and transfer this data to the management tool. At first glance, this may sound banal, but saves a re-entering of the number, as long as you have mistyped.