Enterprise Management Associates (EMA™), a major IT research and consulting firm released a new report, “Enterprises Embrace AI-Driven Wi-Fi to Meet Today’s Network Demands,” authored by Shamus McGillicuddy, vice president of research for network infrastructure and operations at EMA. The report is a survey of 152 North American IT professionals in which EMA examines the key drivers reshaping enterprise Wi-Fi networks and highlights how IT organizations are successfully navigating these changes.
Enterprises are changing the way they use Wi-Fi networks, and that change is launching a wave of infrastructure refreshes and upgrades. Fifty-nine percent of companies will initiate such a project within the next 12 months, with most of them transitioning from Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 7. Office mobility, increased bandwidth demand, and higher performance expectations are key factors driving investment in next-generation wireless technologies.
As requirements mandate improvements these changes are leading IT teams to adopt AI-powered Wi-Fi 7 solutions that deliver universal zero trust network access, high-availability architecture, location-based services, and cloud-based management. EMA’s research shows that organizations adopting these capabilities will experience greater overall success with Wi-Fi initiatives.
“The nature of work has changed, and this change has rendered legacy Wi-Fi architecture obsolete,” McGillicuddy said. “End users are no longer tethered to their desks. They are mobile, which requires broader coverage and capacity for high-density connections. They are also using real-time communications applications more regularly, which drives up bandwidth consumption and elevates performance requirements.”
Some of the key findings from the report include:
- Only 46.7% of IT professionals report their organization’s current approach to Wi-Fi networking as a complete success
- 41.4% identify rising user expectations as the top challenge in Wi-Fi management
- 67.1% cite performance requirements as the leading driver for upgrades for campus and office networks
A detailed analysis of the research findings is available in the report, “Enterprises Embrace AI-Driven Wi-Fi to Meet Today’s Network Demands.”
Shamus is providing a free webinar on October 21 to explore the results and what they mean for enterprise IT organizations.
Extreme Networks : Sponsors of the independent research
