Mist Systems Introduction with Jeff Aaron

by way of introduction my name is Jeff Aaron I run marketing it miss and I'm actually very excited to be here this is miss first mobility field day I'm here with Sudhir Mata who runs our product group and Bob Friday who is our co-founder and CTO even though this is our first mobility field day I've actually done a couple field days before in the past and what I'm really excited about is the opportunity to one give you guys a deep dive into our technology also hear your guys feedback as to what you like and don't like but also we're going to talk about what's happening in the industry and where we think miss can help evolve to help satisfy those requirements that's what we're going to do over the next next two hours or so and hopefully it's a very interactive session which as Tom mentioned I have no doubt it will be before I kind of get started though on the intro section as to kind of the background it's may be worthwhile just to give a big elevate a high level elevator pitch on NIST now for lack of a better term what we're doing at this company so these wireless network so we're all about creating and we brought to market the first AI driven wireless LAN which really uses machine learning and modern cloud elements to really do two primary things the first thing is all about bringing Wi-Fi into the modern smart device our so it's all about using proactive operations it's all about using predictive recommended recommendations it's all about giving better visibility into the user experience not necessarily just the network but the user experience so Wi-Fi for the first time is more predictable more reliable perhaps most importantly more measurable so it's all about managing Wireless now as a service that's more predictable reliable and measurable the second thing we're going to talk about here is also expanding wireless so you can now do more with Wireless so it's all about introducing new indoor personalized location-based experience on top of your wireless so the second thing we'll talk about is the convergence of Wi-Fi with Bluetooth Low Energy and even IOT so now you can get all that in a single integrated platform so you can do everything you want and more with your mobility experience so the next two hours are going to add a little bit like this so I am going to do a little bit of a 10-15 minute intro on the mists platform for those not familiar with it what is the elements of our learning platform how does it work a little bit high-level stuff and how we've been doing two dates and shipping about a year ago then a Sudhir and Bobby are going to come on board and do a deep dive on the product they're going to do actual demonstrations on our assurance piece which shows again that HiFi how you can do things like set up service levels do root cause remediation analysis using machine learning they can do dynamic packet capture that will all be part of their demo then we'll transition more to a demo that focuses on that location-based services we mentioned about it we'll talk about and show some of the program ability that comes from a platform being an API first platform and then finally we'll round it out with a little bit of what's next where we see the wireless industry going love to you know have your guys feedback on that and how miss is preparing for some of those changes okay so maybe before actually I do get started on how miss works and what exactly the miss platform is we do have the distinction factor to having Bob here who founded missed about three years ago with our co-founder CJ hi jelluh from Cisco and oftentimes we get asked a question you know why did a new startup come out in this fairly mature space for a lot of incumbency so Bob maybe you want to spend two seconds just talking about why what was the impetus for founding mist yeah so you know when I found in this three years ago or so it was really kind of with this vision of leveraging the latest AI in cloud technologies to really help these enterprises deliver these mobile experiences over the wireless networks and you know this was kind of with the belief that you know we are going to see Wi-Fi become the dominant access and you know our experiences are going to be moving in door and then fundamentally we're helping enterprises become service providers so that was kind of impetus to why we thought hey there's time for a new wireless company out in the space you know when I started air space 17 people remember air space 17 years ago you know that adventure was really founded around trying to help enterprises manage thousands of ATP's in their network for their employees right that was the adventure and the transition around moving from autonomous to controllers you know was missed we're really working on three market transitions that were helping enterprises with and we're basically this time around helping enterprises really become service writer that helping them manage end-to-end services you know any airspace Avenger was more around helping them manage some sort of eighty or something here we're starting to transition to a world where we're helping them manage and in services that they're trying to put on top of these networks in the first market transition that were are helping them with is really this ble Wi-Fi Wi-Fi convergence transition you know and it reminds me a lot of the old Wi-Fi days when life I first started life I started kind of just nice to have thing it really wasn't until Intel put Wi-Fi into our laptops that was the catalyst that really kind of got Wi-Fi to go for a nice to have to a must have for those who were around long as a long as I have been they may not remember which there was a day when it was hard to sell Wi-Fi to an IT guy with Deeley I see some a very similar plot playing out here you know Apple put their ID context all our iPhones about three years ago 2013 or so right and with that transition we now have ble and Wi-Fi ble in all our Android in Google laptops so that's the beginning of that transition the other interesting thing about this transition is where Wi-Fi tends to be an IT discussion this transition is really a marketing discussion you know back in my airspace day it was the employee driving the Wi-Fi into the IT and dragging it into the enterprise in this transition it's really the marketing dragon ble into the enterprise IT departments and pulling it in the other major transition that got me to start the company was really around this consumption model you know that hey we're starting to see a model where all the core enterprise services are really moving from the enterprise to cloud Salesforce HR Payroll Wireless is kind of the last man standing inside of the enterprise and we're starting to see a trend where even that is starting to be moved to more of a cloud service model and when you look deeply at what's going on here you see two trends there you see this services moving to the cloud you also see wireless access becoming the dominant access so when you start to see those two trends happen it kind of raises the question of what would you do would you design a different network for that type of architecture you know would apples and VLANs still makes sense when that happens and probably the third transition is really what I call this evolution from IT to ops you know and here this is where mrs. focus on this is really one the real reasons I started missed was there was mean for a new architecture and wireless networking you know when you look at this transition it's really about try and help the enterprise IT guy move to more of an eighth API paradigm we are trying to bring a Google and Netflix like cloud architecture to wireless IT and this is really around the innovation of speed you know we're trying to move from an embedded software architecture you know that has all that long development time you know all those bugs in it to more of a distributed software architecture that you can involve in develop quickly so that was kind of impetus for miss you know and why I jumped off the boat and decided this is a good thing to do cool so in terms of you know the platform itself you know our big impetus as I mentioned is around moving the wireless from a traditional hardware network centric model to one that's more user centric where it's all about the user experience and how to improve upon that whether it's through better operations or better location experiences now key that are three fundamental things that you're going to keep hearing us repeat throughout the course of this this activity this is the core of what we're doing it is using artificial intelligence to automate the operations again we'll show you the best way to hammer that home it's actually showing you through some of our demos it's all about integrating that high accuracy location so there's more personalized location experiences the last thing which will show you which is unique it's all about API first and programmability so common themes that you'll see throughout the course of this this session real quick just on who misses of the company is you met Bob our founder many of you know sue J had jela the other co-founder who do is running Cisco's enterprise Wireless and switching goofer for several years prior alongside Brett Galloway is our chairman Randi Frey basically built ubiquitous cloud and then there's a Sudhir and myself and did yagna the interesting thing about the slide is we've all been competing with each other for last 15 years and when the new startup came on board and the wireless space we're all excited to kind of jump on board and come together so I think that's one of the key takeaways here and that we all came together to join mist AI so we talked about it Tom already joked about it once one of the most overused terms in tech right now I think if you drive up 101 you'll probably see 15 billboards on the way here that AI in fact I think Gartner said by 2020 every IT product is can have some type of AI in some way shape or form but the fact the matter is it's just not a marketing slogan for us we do take it very seriously it is the core of what we're doing in terms of a wireless LAN platform and so maybe I know Bob you just got comfortable maybe you want to come back up and talk a little bit about why miss AI is different from I think some of the other nomenclatures out there essence you know when I started miss you know we had this vision of building this AI virtual wireless assistant so when you start an AI wireless company it starts with a unique blend of DNA you know you have to start with scientists those domain expertise now they can actually do something with this data in what you'll find at MIT is you'll probably find one of the deepest benches when it comes to wireless DNA and we have people from Aruba trapeze Cisco aerospace you know this is a very deep bench of Wireless DNA they're the second ingredient into building a wireless I company is really around data scientists you know and this is where you've got to bring in people who actually understand the math and the statistics and the data that you're trying to manipulate and what you'll find at Mis is a unique blend of particle physicists and professors who are actually very deeply in depth into statistics I'm amazing Lee I found particle physicists actually make very good data scientists when you're working with very complicated problems and probably the third thing is you need a cloud you need a team that has actually built a cloud at scale you know and what you'll find at Mis is a very deep bench of people who have actually worked at very large cloud companies and then built services that actually have scaled in the past so when you look at mists and what's unique in this it starts with the team you know as with any startup adventure it's really the team it's a team sport you know you need to have a strong team to get to the finish line probably the second thing you'll find unique at Mis is really around this converged ble Wi-Fi solution this is a grounds up built solution and in to deliver actual location-based services this is not this ideally put on to an eight key afterthought when it comes to converge ble Wi-Fi if you have customers looking for that this is the Best of Breed when it comes to that the third thing that's unique about miss is as virtual AI wireless assistant you know this is the vision of fundamentally changing how we are going to be managing our wireless networks in the future and providing visibility all the way down to these end-user experiences so those are the three things remember team converts ble Wi-Fi in virtual wireless AI assistants that's what makes missing unique right now so real quickly our platform and some really showing up on the screen hopefully it's showing up on the viewers there I apologize for that so we do actually sell access points we do have two families of access points the AP family and the BT eleven family in fact we announced two new platforms on the AP family today that's in front of you guys in terms of an outdoor access point we have our high-end ap 41 which is our flagship we just had actually announced an AP 21 which is a middle range one as well as then our BT family which is Bluetooth roaming perhaps more interesting is the fact that this is all 100% operated and managed by the MS cloud this was a purpose-built cloud built on modern cloud elements again we had the luxury of starting from scratch we had a clean sheet of paper when we designed the product and we actually looked at how LinkedIn and Facebook and Google were able to collect hundreds of millions of petabytes of data and do information with that and that's what we did with our modern cloud so it's built using things like storm and spark and Kafka and containers for portability reliability distributed performance that's all built into our architecture here to do things at scale and then last thing is which we'll show you is the AI benefits so actionable insight event correlation predictive recommendations high accuracy location these are all things that are come out very soon when we talk about our learning platform our Learning W and about the other point it is all about shifting Wireless to wireless as a service so on top of our platform to our services that are offered today there's three we're constantly adding more in fact we just added this third one in February the asset visibility the three platforms that are available today our assurance primarily Wi-Fi assurance so again it's that service levels it's the troubleshooting it's the all the simplified operations you want for your Wi-Fi which will show you there's the engagement which is again primarily around ble so the ability to push information to users running an application with a missed SDK so things like indoor turn-by-turn directions proximity based messaging are examples of ble engagement that you can use over the same infrastructure that you're using for Wi-Fi the last thing that we'll show you is asset visibility that same infrastructure can help track wheelchairs track pallets track elderly patients in a hospital track kindergarteners track employees if there's an emergency on campus so again that's all built into the same infrastructure using the converged platform ok real quickly final slide before we move to the demo is we have been shipping for about a year now we have about 200 customers worldwide about 10 of them are in the Fortune 100 so again a small company with a pretty large footprint to date with some pretty impressive brands they do span every vertical everything from healthcare to retail to carpet enterprise again we're very proud of that our go-to-market is primarily through channels with an emphasis on managed service providers so again we do range from some tier one MSPs like NTT in Japan to a more regional Basin and national based partners like you know II Plus and wwt and folks that you can see here I wish of all of these what are your biggest deployments yeah good question so there's several deployments that are a relatively large so Swan and Dolphin is one of our flagship accounts it's basically their entire network is a point right now for it's primarily for both Wi-Fi and Billy but primarily for ble and we're actually going to show you some information on that but for example they're using so when you come on site they want to greet customers greet your guests as well offer different offers across the hotel but also for the convention center you want to have very tight analytics you know which spaces are heavily trafficked in which not so that's an example of one of our top ones Brickell Mall is another big one which will show you guys it's a premier mall in Miami will actually show you their wayfinding demo so they want an ultimate experience or when you're on site you can actually navigate your way to different retail environments as well as all the analytics and then some of the ones that are grayed out there you know the top social media companies using us for other shuttles with some of these guys that are using us for the corporate environments as well so there's did you frame that in any kind of AP and client counts at all yeah so the largest one today is about a five hundred APs and growing so the interesting thing about since we've been shipping for about eight years typically what people do is they'll start with a new building or a new deployment and then they grow from there so this is growing very very rapidly from there but the largest one is about four or five hundred ApS right now what is your message look like around a traditional campus enterprise deployment I look on your website and I don't see any Enterprise design guide don't see any guide 0.1 X and roaming and well you know obviously you have a deep heritage as far as its protocols and all that our concern do you see that as a play absolutely yeah so as you said there's there's two plays here really primarily and actually our customer base is kind of split down the middle there is a traditional Wi-Fi play so anyone that's using Wi-Fi today we think we have a strong play to go after them as they move to the cloud and want to move towards more automation and AI driven platforms for simpler cost so we recognize we probably need to do more on the content side but we actually have strong case studies and strong use cases around that in fact what we're going to show you here is most of the unique features but if you're looking for things like you know guess W lands and a 2.1 x we have all that built into our platform as well just like any other WLAN system and so I think Sam so we're real starting is most of these like you take obviously they won't let us put their names on here but you take this online retailer we have about 500 locations with them live right and growing and essentially we've replaced the you know current gen you know cloud infrastructure player that's out there and most of these guys are starting at the edges and we're bleeding into the campus it is it is our intention to be on campus we want to be and actually by the MSA we sign with them we are their new global Wi-Fi standard period worldwide right and they have today about close to a hundred thousand ap footprint with their current vendor right and we are the new global Wi-Fi standard for this company we are their new global Wi-Fi standard we replace the existing cloud player in the market replaced right they had the existing vendor we replaced because they were lacking in sight so so the idea is for most of these guys where we're starting in the branches we're going into the campus and for all of them the intent is that we are the new global Wi-Fi standard I know you talked about the the existing cloud Wi-Fi manufacturer that currently has troubles I think in some large campus enterprise deployments - they do and so I guess my concern is is it as you said everybody likes to start at the edge and work their way in and then they realize when they get in yeah oh crap that's the hard part right correct it's good points and the reason is this so and maybe I'll address that is you know today they don't have very many cuts a large campus deployments fundamentally because in some cases controllers actually played a role and a meaningful role of data are tunneling right data as arbitration so we actually have just one about a I would say it's 10,000 access point at scale deployment and we're just starting and in there are the way our data architecture is we're providing seamless roaming is one of the transportation in the country seamless roaming they would get in yet another station get on a train go you know ten stations over get off the strain and our if these actually support l2tp weekly tunneling and and and other tunneling technology we do are doing IPSec as well and so it is our intent to be in campus it is our intent to be on campus and we're not shying away from it yep real quick going back you mentioned the model 60 of the one you actually want yeah that's external antenna connectors is did I hear that correctly yes so the AP 61 is a four by four for spatial stream outdoor AP with D and Bob's going to talk about this billion generated the full billion ten array and has both internal and external antennas okay so there's now the capability of beginning to shape that coverage a little bit off-center yeah so we have two by two four by four outdoor and ble lonely and and the ble only just note of interest Guilford College is a half mile from my house very good we and the same cloud provider we were talking about was we who we competed with and again it all comes down to and once you see the demo it you know the fact that most of the wireless companies per day have been born before the iPhone was invented shows when you actually start to get to the meat of this and actually we can we can move to that now I don't there's any other questions right now but one question may be out of place for where you are but I'll just ask it so with all the the whiz-bang array under the hood what if somebody just watched normal Wi-Fi and if they just want access it's miss not a place for that no actually it is very much a place for it and maybe again this is two points to we have to make sure our marketing doesn't say we are only for the smart people or only for the large enterprise right we actually we have we have a lot of banks you know 180 branch deployments we have a restaurant chain that is 40 restaurants that is just you know single 80 Wi-Fi in every restaurant so yeah we have car dealerships all of that kind of stuff anywhere again the front of the same premise right originally cloud was started was I want to make my deployment simple right plug in boom it works and I got it right that use case still applies for us all we are saying is we didn't stop at deployment we went to operations right simplifying office but yes absolutely good question can ask a question about the Lt l2tp v3 stuff yes is that available everywhere right now it is and is what's that like give like what what do you see that doing what we see that doing is is doing what Sam was talking about on controllers had a place where if I wanted to just bring all my traffic to one point of exit so my roaming and everything with the ads right they're using that to bring else which is essential for when you measure in the context of seamless roaming yeah so are we talking about like an l-3 roam here where we're holding on IP addresses absolutely and that's kind of your your approach to make that not available the one one option is you go build another controller another option is you use some of the open you know open standard stuff out there that's what we write and what is the implementation look like on that it basically is an AP and I'll show you in the demo share an AP you could actually tag a WLAN to say if this WLAN is going you know north to the gas taxes Ltd be termination and this WLAN is going to stay local so on a per WLAN basis we can actually take traffic to the core or to drop traffic at the edge interesting okay thanks and yeah give many deployments actually one of our largest service providers they are launching their managed service such that all of their customer traffic goes through their data center firewalls and everything in traffic is just you know the egress ingress for traffic is at the same point yeah so we're not shying away from these larger deployments is models for you what's the far side net of the tunnel they're like obviously the AP is one source r1k or any whatever you want to cut the reminder to a student University near a wherever you want standard yeah

Channel: Tech Field Day

Views: 11,013

Keywords: Tech Field Day, Mobility Field Day 2, MFD2, Mobility Field Day, MFD, TFD, Mist, Mist Systems, Wireless, BL, BLE, Access Point, IoT, jeff aaron, bob friday

Id: R8zi23EegYA

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2017