I was going to name this blog “Paradigmatical Remodeling”, but $3 words are the crux of the problem, and I didn’t figure that being the king of those Google search words would be worth much. Aerohive has been using words like Cooperative Control, Distributed Intelligence, Granular Scalability and Local Forwarding for 4 years, and over the last 18 months, we’ve even thrown in Cloud-enabled Management and Cloud-enabled Networking for good measure. We’re drowning in our own $3 word soup over here! While our existing customers ‘get it’, most of the market still doesn’t understand why Aerohive’s technology is reshaping the industry. Well, that’s what today’s blog is all about: manifesting the non-obvious through creative video silliness.
Any company that changes the overall paradigm (scalability, reliability, cost, and so on) in their industry initially struggles with driving their fundamental selling point(s) home with the customer base because they have to first explain why things are the way they are today, and then follow that discussion up with an explanation of how things should be and why (according to their own philosophical meanderings). It’s much more difficult when the market is highly competitive, as it is with enterprise wireless networking, and the de facto standard (controller-based architecture) has been entrenched in the hearts and minds of the industry for years. You might say that the process of changing the de facto standard is somewhat related to Newton’s First Law of Motion.
I’ve been with Aerohive for about 18 months now, and shortly after I walked in the door, I was pretty clear about the fact that all vendors would eventually follow Aerohive’s lead on distributed intelligence. It appears that I was right, BUT (and that’s a squirrely “but”) they’re either doing everything in their power to avoid admitting it or they’re saying they’ve done it when they clearly haven’t. Still, I believe that they’ll eventually get there, though they will struggle in the meantime. So what are vendors doing along their journey toward distributed intelligence?
Hiding the Controller
I said to Hollywood, “Where did he go?”
He said, “Where did whoooo go?”
They “virtualize” it (Bluesocket) by replacing custom hardware with generic hardware and software. Peekaboo! … it’s still a controller…and it has to live somewhere if you have centralized control. The creative part of this approach is that it allows you to hide it more flexibly.
They make it really small (Aruba, Motorola) by putting a “controller in one AP within a cluster of APs.” That’s repeating Colubris’ mistakes of 2007. Why are they now trying to innovate by making controllers smaller? “Betcha can’t guess which AP my controller’s in!” The architecture is like a game of controller whack-a-mole, where you’re limited to the control-plane processing power of a single AP.
They put it in the cloud (Meraki) so that it isn’t on-premise where you’d have to look at it. That’s just great … Isn’t that like putting a flimsy drinking straw between your nose and lungs? Sounds great for homes … no, wait, not even for homes. If my WAN link failures take down my internal Wi-Fi, my wife couldn’t get to her music, files, printing … or anything, and would kill me. Nix that.
They even hide it in the price list! I guess they figured that by marking the price on everything else up, the controller would become a smaller part of the overall equation. That’s like having a giant wart on your nose and trying to make it “fit in” among collagen lip injections, 1980s big hair, and caked-on eye liner. Hey, I’m widely hailed for my odd-ball analogies.
Isn’t it ironic how people are always asking Aerohive, “But where’s your controller?”, and now we’re asking our competitors the same question, but for a different reason?
Given that Aerohive is way ahead of the wireless LAN architecture curve, we find ourselves constantly innovating in uncharted areas. This also means having to make up names for things that have never previously existed. Aerohive finds itself facing not a technology dilemma, but a marketing dilemma. What do we call our APs? Are they intelligent, phat, or how about big boned? What about our control plane protocol suite? Cooperative Control, distributed intelligence, or how about … Now with Rainbows!
Due to last year’s “product-oriented” video, we went into this year’s April Fool’s Day thinking along the same lines, but even out of roughly 5 solid ideas, only one didn’t sink into the swamp. We decided to make a video that makes light of what it’s like trying to fit our next-gen technology and business strategy (e.g. no feature licenses) into today’s de facto marketing and sales schema amidst our competitors’ constant spin and misdirection.
You KNOW we had to fit Justin Bieber in there somewhere, and Adam was the only one comfortable enough in his own skin to attempt a Justin Bieber haircut on film … and in print! Lucky for some of us, we don’t have enough hair to pull off that scene, so we weren’t asked to try. 
Abby and I were walking back from lunch together as Adam was walking off the set, and both of us nearly laughed up our lunch when we saw his hair. Adam is a great sport (and a great actor) for sure!
Amy and I went through about 30 takes, some of them having, “that’s what I said, JACK ASS!” in them. I found out really quick that I SUCK at screen acting, and luckily Amy kept me distracted and laughing while that microphone guy played with and around the seat of my pants (which was making me a little nervous.) I think Amy and I were supposed to hug as part of the scene, but both of us were sweating under those bright lights, so we ended up double high-fiving to maintain personal space … and even THAT got cut from the video … darn it.
My favorite part of the video is Patrick and Yong. I didn’t see that part being filmed, but when I saw the final cut, I just doubled over laughing!
I will say that acting is WAY harder than it looks. Some people have the gift, and some people don’t (namely, me).
Special thanks go out to our awesome friend Roslyn Rissler (screenwriter, set designer, planner/organizer, subcontractor hirer, wardrobe dictator, producer, cat herder, and all-around motherly figure) who brought it all together on-schedule and on-budget … just barely, due to our internal hemming and hawing over how to pull this thing off. An April Fools video on April 5th would be a little out of whack, so she had to burn the midnight oil on this project.
So now, to make our lives and the lives of our prospects a lot simpler, when prospects ask us how our new controller-less technology works, rather than giving them a 50-page technology brief, we’re just going to say, “with rainbows, of course!”
The Challenge
Next year, there will definitely be a video. Heck, it’s practically a tradition now! We’re looking for ideas for the 2012 video, and if your idea for the video gets accepted, then we’ll fly you out (all expenses paid) to our HQ office in Sunnyvale, CA for a visit with the team and a cameo spot in the video. Send your ideas to Ideas {at} Aerohive.com.
