Demystifying Cisco Mobility Express – Common Misconceptions about Cisco Solutions

Whether it’s to customers, resellers or industry leaders, there are some perceptions about Cisco that may make organizations with small to medium deployment feel having a high-quality Cisco solution is out of reach. With the recent release of Cisco Mobility Express, we can dispel some of these misconceptions or myths.

Here’s a smattering of what we’ve heard:

The process of installing Cisco solutions takes way too long!

With Cisco Mobility Express it only takes minutes to get a Cisco wireless network up and running. Where most solutions geared for the small to medium deployment require configurations from the ground up.

Mobility Express allows you to configure the solution over-the-air via the Cisco Wireless App. on your favorite smart mobile device. And it comes packed with all of the preconfigured advanced features that are based on best practices, turned on by default. This quickens Mobility Express deployment time and eliminates the need for deep Wi-Fi expertise.

Cisco is often said to, “Charge a premium for the Cisco brand”.

With Mobility Express—the Aironet 1850 and 1830 Access Points—Cisco is able to deliver an enterprise-class solution to small and medium-sized businesses at a price point that aligns to their needs without compromising Cisco reliability or excellence. Cisco Mobility Express delivers the most cost-effective enterprise WLAN solution on the market allowing organizations to gain the reliability and leading support Cisco is known for.

A recent analysis shows that a small or medium-sized company pricing out 802.11ac Wave 2 solutions will see a 22-42% reduction in price if they outfit their organization with Cisco Aironet 1830 or Aironet 1850 Access Points compared to competitive products.

People claim that you need a physical controller appliance to get Cisco Wi-Fi upping the cost and complexity of the system,

Even before the release of Cisco Mobility Express, both of these statements weren’t true. Mobility Express and Cisco Meraki are virtualized solutions that require no physical WLAN controller appliance. A central access point serves the controller function and Mobility Express supports the latest in Wi-Fi technology: 802.11ac Wave 2 for on-premises or local control. If you are looking for a cloud-managed solution Cisco Meraki delivers the enterprise-class functionality you need.

You need to be Cisco Certified to Set-up Cisco solutions.

Cisco Mobility Express uses the Cisco Wireless Software Release 8.1 software . Within this software we have developed guided expertise to not only get the solution up and running, but make sure organizations take the proper steps to secure the environment. Cisco worked extensively with our install base customers to understand and develop best practices guidelines when setting up a Wi-Fi and this is available out-of-the-box

For instance, best practices say, ”Always change the default user name and password.” Cisco Mobility Express doesn’t have a default user name and password. Once you wireless connect to the Mobility Express SSID the first thing it does is prompt you to establish a unique user name and password. With solutions that provide a default user name and password, often administrators use that, make their specific configuration changes and never change the default credentials. This makes the environment susceptible to malicious activity.

Cisco doesn’t have a small to medium deployment strategy or Cisco has backed out of the mid-market and is only focused on Enterprise.

This is absolutely not true. We have evolved our solution for the midmarket over time. Initially introducing Autonomous mode access points, then giving the ability to manage those APs with Cisco Prime Infrastructure. Cisco Mobility Express is the next step in this evolution and we will look to support this market by offering innovations that meet their needs from and operational and budgetary perspective.

Want to see the latest updates about Cisco Mobility Express? Follow our hashtag, #MobilityExpress. Please tweet us @Cisco_Mobility if you have any questions or comments.