Oh , looks like we're about to have a party over here . We're going to have some fun . Oh , you love it . What's up ? Nerds and nerdettes . This is Drew Lentz , the Wireless Nerd , and I've got a couple of people on the call today with me and I'm going to let Justin and Tom , I'm going to let you guys introduce yourself and talk about it . But , uh , today we've got a . We've got a fun roundtable discussion about something we got the privilege to go to this week . It was phenomenal . So go ahead , take it away , tom . I'll start with you . Man , who are you ? What do you do , etc .
Speaker 3Etc tom and I attend ubiquity events , uh , sometimes even talk about them on my youtube channel . Yeah , it was like , yeah , it's a lot of fun . No , I have a YouTube channel , Tom , here from Lawrence Systems Easy to find that . I talk about Ubiquity and many other things on my channel . But it was cool because I got to hang out with everyone at the Ubiquity event , get to meet some people in person for the first time , and so we're excited here to you know , bring some of the insights and you know , and so we're excited here to you know , bring some of the insights and you know , all those fun things to talk about . So , yeah , thanks for having me on . This is a lot of fun .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , I figured you know , I think you put something out , Jesse , I think you put something out , and we all had , like our different opinions and perspectives . I was like you know , why don't we just all get on and create some ideas ? So next up , uh , senior tab geeks , go ahead . Man , who are you ? What do you do ?
Speaker 2Uh yeah , so I'm Jesse with tab geeks and uh , I gotta say it's a real treat for me to be on here with Tom , because I learned so much of what I know about and kind of get to see behind the curtain , if you will , about what was , what's coming and how all that has come together . So I specialize mostly in business technology on my YouTube channel podcasts . I was very heavy in Google Workspace for several years . Now I'm branching out some more , getting into more product reviews . Ubiquity is a major cornerstone for me and so I've got a lot more coming up on that soon .
Speaker 1Nice , nice Well , y'all I appreciate it . And I'm Drew , I'm a wireless guy , so I have a long and interesting history with Ubiquity . It goes back it was funny when Robert was showing the SR51 card that was up on the screen . Oh yeah , my background is in building wireless ISPs and so , coming from those days , I worked for a distributor at the time where we got to put together a distribution agreement to lock down If I remember correctly it was exclusivity for distribution of the Ubiquiti product line for a solid three years and the CTO that I took it to to ink it at the distributor I was with said no , no , we're not going to carry that , no one's ever going to want it .
Speaker 1And that was right when they first introduced the power station . So I got to test out the very first production power station in Kentucky and then move into Nano and long history there with the UISP stuff and then as they moved into Wi-Fi interesting but my ISP stuff and then as they moved into wifi interesting . But my background is is obviously on the wireless side . So I do , I do a little bit of wireless here and there .
Speaker 3Have a good time with it post , post online and talk , smack and whatnot . But you know I like that . They started with the history of ubiquity Cause I think not enough people realize that old history they have they just years of wireless experience . They aren't new to the game . They've been doing it for a long time . They solved the problem at scale at an affordable price . They were really innovative from the beginning on that . Shout out for that . I've thought about putting a video together about their history of stuff .
Speaker 1Even having the old logo on there . I haven't seen that logo in a minute . You know what I mean . But that really is . It goes to the event . That really is it , it . It goes to the event that we were at and it goes to just the whole surroundings of the technology and how they started to solve the problem . I mean even even something we'll talk about later where , where he popped in , you know he talked about uh . You know the reason that they did the , the uh , the identity project was because he couldn't get his vpn to work . You know what I mean .
Speaker 1So , coming into the industry and being completely disruptive in a way , I remember telling Robert , when the power station first came out , I said hey , man , you can't do this , you can't drop the price to what that is . You're going to bottom out the industry and it's not going to be met with good , friendly vibes . He's like I'm doing it . I was like , all right , let's go , man . So it was . It was fascinating to see , it's been fascinating to watch the growth of ubiquity over the course of the last , you know , 10 years and 15 years and really see where it's going , what they're doing . Um , but let's start . Let's start at the top right . So , uh , first mr mack telcoff says I wish , wish he could have been here with y'all , but , uh , but he could have made that would have been fun , that would have that around it out , you know , with a good fourth there . Uh , either way , we're thinking about you and we're here . So please , you know , jump in the comments .
Speaker 1Um , so , so I was at the wireless land professional conference and two of the guys from ubiquity were there and they extended the invite to come out and be a part of this . This is the first uwc that they've done . I kept asking you guys have done this before , right ? And I said , no , nothing , nothing like this . So this was the first one . I mean it .
Speaker 1It had such a cool vibe . Um , it really reminded me of the old , of some of the old shows , and , and you know , I , I attend every , pretty much every major trade show you can , you can be at . You know whether it's cisco live or whether it's hp , discover or ces or any of these shows . And this one was just like stripped down raw . Uh , it was it , but it was cool , I think I I can't remember it was one of you or both . You said the same thing where it was like just the brutal honesty from robert was cool , yeah , but also it's like you could only do that in a , in a trusted environment , you know , yeah yeah , there was about 300 people there , so they did not go and make it a big event .
Speaker 3It really , even though I think it said it ended at four , it kind of ended at three in terms of like official them talking which is fine .
Speaker 3I was thrilled because all of us were chomping at the bit , because we wanted to talk to each other . They really brought in I didn't talk to a bunch of suit and ties , I'll just kind of say it like that . You know , I didn't talk to people who didn't put their hands on the product and were looking for something . Like you might see it . You said some of the more corporate ones . These were the installers , the technicians . Some of them were MSP business owners , but they understood the product . They're like yeah , this is how we solve a problem , this is how we do a solution , and obviously both of you are included in the installer .
Speaker 3More technical people now , and I like that . Those people were there . I got to engage with them and so did the Unify people Like it gives them a firsthand experience . You know , not through the forums or wherever , or some posts on Reddit . It's like direct talking to someone who's happy about that they use your product . Doesn't mean we're not critical , as I really like Unify and I'm certainly someone who's also , at the same time , critical of it , and I got to talk to people about it and it was great it's having having the face right .
Speaker 1It's like you know , it's like what's you know . It's like your parents asking , well , what number do I call Google on ? You know it's . This was having someone you know , clear and present and there and interactive and accessible , and I think that that was interesting . One of the people sitting in the row with me leaned over and said it's not every day you get Forbes' youngest billionaire standing in front of you having a conversation , taking time out of his day to do it . I thought that was pretty neat . What were your takeaways on it , jesse ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I was going to say to your point about the suits there weren't a whole lot of suits there . In fact the CEO , robert , wasn't wearing a suit .
Speaker 1We don't expect him to wear one Tell me everyone wasn't expecting for him to come out in a black turtleneck and do a one more thing .
Speaker 3I mean that was like .
Speaker 2I wish he did one more thing a few times , a few one mores .
Speaker 1Yeah , there was a lot of oh I promised I wouldn't talk about this , but yeah , but let me just show you one more slide . You know that was .
Speaker 2Yeah exactly , and that was you know something that you don't see every day as well and that's one of the things that I said in my video about this is that it was raw , it was authentic and it was real , and that's something that you just don't get at any of the large shows . I'm going to Google Next in two weeks and there's going to be 40,000 people there and the keynote's literally going to be in an arena , and I mean , people are going to be sitting up with nosebleeds , whatever , whatever , who knows what .
Speaker 2And that's going to be . I mean they're . They're rehearsing now for that in two weeks , so that's you know .
Speaker 3It was funny this wasn't rehearsed no , I was talking to the team about .
Speaker 1You know how much rehearsal did y'all do ? And they're like , well , we weren't really . We think we know what we're talking about , but that's you know . That goes into the whole mantra of what it was , and that was that was .
Speaker 1A key takeaway for me was was you know and again , I come from , I come from from total corporate side , right , I come from from the background , doing stuff you know with comcast and doing stuff with meta , doing stuff with cisco , like the , the traditional , you know old school way to do it , and not having that though it left me a little bit of a loss because I looked around the crowd I was like , okay , well , out of all , out of everyone in the room , not , and that I know everybody , right , but seeing the names and the brands and the name you know , the logos and whatnot , to me it was like , okay , well , this is great , but this is it's definitely a different group . It wasn't the group of people that were that were doing things at massive scale , right , and my friends from ISP supplies you know , steve was there for my ISP supplies , the guys from Streakwave were there , the guys from you know , all the different distributors were there . But again , those distributors , those . You're not talking about that upper tier . You're not talking about Ingram micro . You're not talking about tech data . You're not talking about worldwide technologies and Presidio .
Speaker 1You're talking like a level underneath that and and that , to me you know you're going to hear my theme over over all this is like what is ubiquity doing to be enterprise ready ? You know , it's not just about the equipment , there's so much more . And just looking at the crowd and the raw , unpolished component of it was like , okay , this is good , it's a good place to start . What are you what ? What are they doing to build into that ? And that's that was my thing . Like , okay , you say you're going to , you're going to get in , you're going to get into the big stuff , but how ? You know what I mean what are you doing to enter into that market ?
Speaker 3And I'm going to say someone brought this up as a question because they just don't have this yet they're increasing their support . Awesome , that's good roadmap , as you said , if you want to move into the enterprise space . But you kind of need a special channel partner program support . So it's not just anyone can call support . No , we're the people that know things a little better . In matter of fact , we want to start at the level two tax . We don't want to start at the .
Speaker 3So did you plug it in tax ? I mean , great that you offer those as a service , but give us a fast path , give us a test to take . Tell us to get a cert . Matter of fact , other companies like Arista . Before you become an Arista reseller , you go through a reseller program . You go through and get a couple of your tech certified that they've gone through and understand the product . Then they're like okay , you guys are smart enough , you passed the test , you can now become an Arista dealer , also here . Now we'll let you talk to our support . This is , like you said , that maturation . You need to offer the enterprise level of support . You can't just say , well , yeah , we'll , we'll sell to the home user , we'll sell to the um two person office and we're going to sell to the company that's in the fortune 100 .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , kind of different . So let's so . So I do want to . I've got it set up here to walk through this . You know , let's , let's relive the day right , let's go back and let's let's think about when , when Robert took the stage , you walked up , it was awesome , it was great to see everybody there . You know , I've , I'm six , five , right , so seeing someone tall walk out and , and you know , leaning over and talking on the microphones , and then you know when , when , when the Q and a guy popped , popped out , he's like where'd you get that mic ?
Speaker 3I mean that was a wireless mic . Awkwardness of that of of a tall guy leaning down really far for a microphone to try to talk , was it made me really chuckle . I'm like they said not to take pictures during his keynote but I'm like I want to take a picture , not to share anything other than how amusing this is , unintentional amusement . It made it very authentic like , like you said , did they rehearse ? No , not really they would have . They would have realized the tall CEO guy . Yeah , Bring the mic up for that guy .
Ubiquity CEO Keynote Discussion Speaker 1And I took . So I was like vigorously taking notes because , because I was thinking about you know what . What I was told and just to be clear , is , I went in at the beginning and I asked you know , safi , the VP of sales . I said , hey man , you guys brought me in here to cover this thing and to talk about it and to socialize it , but you've got to let me take some photos , man . This is going to be very difficult to do if I'm just live blogging data . And we started a thread up on Reddit and we were getting hated on on Reddit because we weren't posting enough information .
Speaker 1It was like just tell us what they're talking about . I was like , look , they didn't ask us not to talk , they didn't , they didn't make a sign , something so don't talk about . But it was an understanding that they were going to share some stuff with us , they were going to be vulnerable with us in a way to get some feedback , and that was really cool . But I did take some notes because you know , I you know talking about how he started , how he started the enterprise wi-fi side by seeing d-link 1 , d-link 2 , etc . And then realizing , hey , you know , there's something that's so expensive that doesn't work in this market , but the consumer stuff just isn't there .
Speaker 1And that's where Unify was birthed out of was that scalable management of Wi-Fi APs , and it was great to see that trend continued on and I love the fact that they got their roots in Wi-Fi and in wireless . I mean , being a wireless person , to see everything that they've branched off into has been really great . But then , as he started talking about the value , I mean , what do you think about this statement ? More and more powerful features every quarter . He said that . And then he said that the customers like them because it's a value on top of value on top of value , and it's not just low cost . What are your thoughts around that comment that he made ?
Speaker 3So one of my other favorite CEOs is is uh , huntress , and he says almost something the same give more than you take . I'll say that all the time . I love when I love when kyle says always get I might . He says my goal is always to get back more than I take and I kind of like that as a concept and , um , I think that's true . They ubiquity has really stayed the course for a company that's been around for a few years . They're big enough right now that , other than the crowd that is listening to us and us here present as well , we would go nuts and be super angry and we would be having a completely different version of this If they hit , announced everything's going to subscription guys , but the reality is they could pull it off . They could make a disastrous amount of money , like it . Just they could basically become the next broad .
Speaker 3But , they don't . They really have done that where I still have confidence . And my question for the CEO was hey , do you , is there anything on this roadmap that takes away like that ? So it's the controller ? And he said no .
Speaker 1And I said yeah , you did stand up and ask that You're like controller . And he said no and I said yeah , you did stand up and ask that you're like yo , where are you going with this man ?
Speaker 3there there was a slight amount where I geeked out , if you , if you notice . I said hey , do you have robert for a self-hosted guitar ? Blah , blah , blah . And he says no , tom , he said my name , you know I can't read my badge .
Speaker 1I mean , you got good eyes , I'm sure , but you can't read my badge that far and then , and then he did also call you out by name , which where he said you know , like the question that tom asked , I was like yes , nice , like well played man , but that was , that was the vibe of the keynote .
Speaker 1It wasn't . It wasn't , you know , uh , promising things , he couldn't deliver it , you know . And the other thing I liked about it was also how he took accountability for some of the stuff that that failed . You know where he's like hey , this is that was not a good decision . Or this cause of what did he say , took years off of his life . You know where he's like hey , this is that was not a good decision , or this cause , what did he say , took years off of his life . Like , you know , really getting out there and saying , look , yeah , I messed up , that was a bad call , you know . Or maybe , maybe , what was it ? What was it that he said that he was ? He said maybe he was like over eager about a product , but it was .
Speaker 1It was good to hear that , to hear him , you know him . Come into terms with that , jesse . What about you ? What do you think ? I mean value on top of value . On top of value . I mean it's really with the marketing that they've been doing , hammering home the licensing stuff and then just reiterating that over and over and over no license , no license , no license . It's a good story , you know .
Speaker 2Yeah for sure , and I'll tell you that's what brought me over to Ubiquity in the first place is no license I had is I don't know dozens of sites on Meraki . And when the time started coming up for renewals and I started getting more into Ubiquity as something that actually had , over the years , improved to the point where I was willing to dive into it and use it as an option for my clients , all of a sudden I realized for the cost of renewal I could get all brand new hardware and never have to pay renewal again . And you know it's . I wouldn't at that time , and certainly not until very recently , have recommended most of the lineup for larger companies that are looking for high reliability and , you know , devices that don't fail or 24-hour turnaround , because they don't offer that . You know something if something breaks , then something breaks .
Speaker 2Now , what I've said in the past in my videos is that the products are affordable enough that I can have one or two of them on the shelf ready as a hot spare , that I saved all that money from licensing . I can just buy the extra and have it ready to go should I need it . Um , and , and you know , in the last couple of years they've already been making a lot of progress in that area with the shadow mode that's coming up uh , once they work out all the kinks in that as well , um , but there's also kind of a a disconnect or a step up . That happens when you move from medium-sized business to enterprise . Right , they have dedicated teams that are experts in this stuff and they're going to want to be hands-on , they're going to want to control every single piece of the chain in the hardware and in the software , and that's almost opposite to what they're doing on the midsize .
Speaker 2And the reason why I love this so much is single pane of glass , the consumer style , you know , design and management . That makes it so easy for even those of us who do know how to do it . On the advanced side , it's still so much nicer and easier . Just go click , click and it's done . You know , sure , there are CLI things that people are going to want to do and can do , and some of those things are always going to be buried in the interface . But as you get to enterprise , you know you need to be able to do a lot more things . That is normal to enterprise and that includes playing nicely with other systems . That includes tying into other platforms . That includes , you know , being able to say that this device will not go down unless X , y and Z , and there have been firmware issues that have just bricked products and cost companies lots and lots of money . Of course , that also happens with other companies .
Speaker 1That's not singular to anybody in the industry .
Speaker 2Exactly , but you address the reliability .
Speaker 3One of the interesting things is this is a double-edged sword here . Certainly , we have all dealt with a bad Meraki update , but you won't find that on Reddit barely ever Maybe someone complaining at our sysadmin , but there's not like the same level of transparency because of the public forums . We very much know what's the problem with Unify One , because sometimes it's in the hands of consumers . Sometimes it's in the hands of consumers , but it's it's in the hands of more people and you're not , because we can't just call and scream at our unify rep like you can't a maraqui rep hey , why is ?
Speaker 1it , you know because I'm paying you this much , and which is probably .
Speaker 3Conversation always starts from rocky , like it isn't working , and I pay you . I pay you a lot of money for this to work properly and it's not so uh I think you see it and and people start saying well , we don't see that rocky . I'm like oh , it exists , trust me . Oh yeah , oh yeah , for sure I think that it's definitely .
Speaker 1You know , there , there there are . There are multiple sides to the market and what works for some doesn't work for other . I have a good friend of mine who , who attended the conference with me , came up and he's a he's a hotelier , he's a hotel property owner down here and he's very hands-on right and he is absolutely hands-on and whenever someone comes in and they install the Wi-Fi and everything , he immediately comes through and puts Ubiquiti in right behind it and I'm like , well , that's great for you , that works for you , because you're comfortable working with it and maintaining it and keeping spares in the closet and doing the things that you do with it . And and you know , as you mentioned , also , as the team mentioned , you know , at UWC , where they said you know , yeah , this is , you're talking about third generation , fourth generation APs , second generation gateways . You know , third generation switching , where where , yeah , there were some problems , there were definitely some problems . But to go back on that licensing conversation , sometimes the licensing is something that people , that people like I mean , sometimes that's an option that they , that they approve because of the support and because of everything that that comes with that license . So I think what's good for one is .
Speaker 1You can't really say that one is better than the other for everybody . Uh , you know , I like , I like both right . I've got maraki inside my house , I've cisco inside my house , I've got ubiquity right behind me . I've got aruba over here . I've , you know , I've got all kinds of weird stuff in my house , but I don't , I , I like where ubiquity is and they've stuck to their guns , which is great , um , but but in my mind there's such a high level of technicality to be able to properly do the things , the network things , and then , especially starting to move into enterprise , there's going to be a much higher level of the things that you need to do . He mentioned some of those three-letter acronyms talking about routing , or four-letter acronyms talking about routing . That's great , but those aren't like . You can't just be like oh , I'm just going to learn BGP today . Like , oh , I'm talking about Robin , that that's great , but those aren't like . Like , you can't just be like oh , I'm just going to learn BGP today . You know , like .
Speaker 3Oh , I'm just going to go . Ospf you know , and I think there's . I think , if they adopt and maybe this is just where his head's at and the open source mindset . And if you look at the open source mindset , yeah , cool , but here's a subscription for support . You can buy right ansible versus ansible tower , ansible's free . Oh , you want the full ansible tower . You want that . You want some ?
Speaker 1red hot linux man , like that's a good that's a good one now here's the switch .
Speaker 3It'll work forever . It's not going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight when the subscription expires . But if you want to know , like you said , you don't learn bgp , you don't learn the nuances of how to set something up . You want some handholding . You want some support . We got a subscription over here . That subscription won't go away . It's a support subscription . We'll we'll replace the device on some , you know , faster warranty for you , cause you're a premium user who have using this . You're using one of these as a core switch and you want that extra level of support when you find a quirk in it . Awesome , here's a subscription for those people . And we still . I've seen people putting in the comments here you're still making the people who go hey , I get to use this in my home .
Speaker 3Yes , awesome , or my home lab , where it's less critical and I'm willing to hammer around and poke at it until it works Great .
Speaker 1Yeah , and it says you know . So Alex on YouTube says Philosophy is to keep products cheap for the users . How they deal with enterprise distributors will make them jack up the prices so they don't cannibalize the products they sell . That , I mean . This goes back to the partner program , and when the question was asked about a partner program , they said , yeah , we hear you guys want one of those , but it's not something we're talking about . I was like , oh God , no , don't say that . Well , there goes that , you know , like that was literally the quote . It's we've heard what you're saying , but it's not something we're talking about . And it was like , oh , okay , well , ouch , I mean , I think my tweet actually said ouch , you know , because it's something that to get into that enterprise space , you know , we talked about and we touched on it , right , and these are conversations we were having at the show , which was really cool because we had Tom sitting at the table with us and we were discussing this with them . The show , which was really cool because we had Tom sitting at the table with us and we were discussing this with them , and that was such a good part of this was having that accessibility to everyone . But we're talking about . You know , and you , you nailed it Most people who do this , they say , hey , it's cheap enough , I can just buy two or three of them and stick them on a shelf and when something goes wrong , you'll break fix it , which which is good for for SMB , which is good for SMB , which is good for mid-market , which is good for small office
Emerging Trends in Enterprise Networking Speaker 1home office .
Speaker 1But for enterprise , where you've got 400 APs deployed , having to break fix things is not really something you ever want to do . And that leads me into a question where the trend right now is , if you look at Nile and you look at Meter and you look at the network as a services company I don't know if you're familiar with them uh , is , is , is , what is some of the stuff . But these are people that are saying , hey , don't worry about it , you know , just tell us , tell us how many users you have and tell us what the sla is , and we're just gonna , we're just gonna charge you per user per month and we're just gonna make sure that everything's there and everything's working . And they rely on ai and ml and all these things and support and all this to magic yeah , it's the magic of all of it , uh , but they're doing it right , and meter just introduced their switching stuff and and now you know john chambers over at nile pushing that and and it's like you're .
Speaker 1I feel like that gap is widening on the enterprise side versus something that that ubiquity can come to the table for , because they're going to fill that gap , like if they do more , if they do move northward which it really looks like they are doing to fill that gap in the space that has been left after the Meraki acquisition to Cisco and Cambium , trying to figure out what they're doing . And you know you've got that weird little . You know you've got SMB and then right above it you've got like that mid-market , that enterprise . It's like there's a gap there that you either have to do it yourself or you have to pay somebody to do it .
Speaker 2So I agree with that and I'll take that a step further . I think that , with Meraki moving over to Cisco and that vacuum that you're talking about there , meraki was the beginning almost of that internet-connected , cloud-based single-pane of glass , and that's why I went after it , because at the time I was managing 100 remote locations and I could do it all just from a dashboard . I said , okay , are there any red lights ? Great , there are red lights . And to my point before about the consumer influence of design on enterprise tools , I think that you're going to get to a point here where , for example , you mentioned Level and Nile . They manage everything for you . That takes it to the extreme .
Speaker 2But I think that , as you have folks who are younger and came up with the design of the , you know , in the time of the design of the iPhone and good design for consumer products , and are bringing the want to have that to enterprise tools , you're going to want that in enterprise as well .
Speaker 2And we see that all the way to the point of the FedEx forum , which we saw Daryl's talk , where he's running it all on Ubiquiti and he's got hundreds of APs there and he can look at the dashboard and he can say , okay , here's exactly what's happening . Here's a single pane of glass and I can see what's happening here . If there's a problem , we go and address it . I know exactly where it is , because I can see all of that . You can't get that from a lot of other tools and I think that there will . There'll always be room for the mega massive . You know the higher end of Cisco and those folks in enterprise . But I think that there's definitely going to be a lot more middle ground as you go just above SMB before you hit you know mega enterprise Blank space right there .
Speaker 2But to his point that's 18,000 people they're supporting on this forum . That's big Tons .
Speaker 1Totally agree .
Speaker 1So , moving on . Next , tom gets up there and I got to say if I had to give an award for my favorite presentation other than my buddy Daryl DeRozia , I would definitely give it to Tom . I fully , thoroughly , absolutely enjoyed Tom's presentation because , being a Wi-Fi guy , everyone is asking about Wi-Fi 7 and they're asking about this and you sit there and you're like , how am I going to explain puncturing to them ? How am I going to explain resources ? Tom , I thought , did a phenomenal job explaining Wi-Fi 7 and then showing what the features and benefits of it were and why it's important to move there . But he didn't even do it from a Ubiquiti perspective , he did it just like as a knowledge from a technical perspective it was so cool man .
Speaker 2Yes , and that's ubiquity , tom , not this time .
Speaker 3Yeah , I should clarify , not me . I did not get to go up on stage . I mean I wouldn't be up there , but you know they , they had wi-fi . Tom . I met him as soon as I walked in . I was like you got a great name . He looked at my badge . He goes , you do too . So , uh , we hit it off really well . I shook his hand right after our presentation . I was like you it . You understood the business use case and it was a very like you said , not Ubiquiti-centric . He talked about the status of Wi-Fi . He went in the weeds , where we would like . You know what we expected him to do . I would say unexpected . I was happy he went there , I should say , but talked about the technical challenges and how they're solving them , how Wi-Fi and the new standards are solving them , and then how Ubiquiti is making products that are matching these new standards and being able to support us at high densities . This was a big part of his talk .
Speaker 2And then , by the way , here's one for everybody .
Speaker 3And then he opened it . He opened it up . He's like you get a Wi-Fi , you get a Wi-Fi .
Speaker 2I never got a wi-fi you know , I appreciated that they didn't give it to us until the end , so we don't have to carry it around all day .
Speaker 1Yes , yes I do want to point out . Uh , uh , you know cody's pointing out that it was his first time presenting , which is true , it really was tom's first time presenting uh on a stage , and so now I mean he , just I I feel like he did a , I feel like he did a fantastic job . Great job If you're watching this , tom . Yes , good job . There you go Round of applause from all of us .
Speaker 3There you go . One more round of applause for our friend Tom .
Speaker 1I think Robert did a bang-up job . I'm just saying , Tom Robert did a good job too .
Wi-Fi 7 Technology Discussion Speaker 1So you mentioned something super important there , right ? And I got to see this when they showed up to the Wireless Land Professional Conference , which , if you're not familiar with , every year there's two main ones and now there's a couple more . But in Phoenix in February , every year it's called the WLPC and it's every wireless nerd from around the globe converges on Phoenix . There's about 500 of us that show up and it is awesome and all we do is just nerd out about wireless all like for three or four days . It's nerd spring break and you can get certifications and learn about tools and all these other things . It's a phenomenal event . It's called WLPC . And then , even more fun is in October it's in Prague . Now , this is the last year it's in Prague . Keith is going to move it to a different spot , but it is such a great event . There's some in Colombia , there's some in Mexico City , there in Spain , there's some really good forums coming up for WLPC , so just look that up .
Speaker 1So the guys come out , tom comes out , and he just pushes new code out of nowhere . He says , hey , let me turn something on . And he turns MLO on one of the Unified 7s and we're all standing around . It's me , a guy from Juniper , a guy from Aruba , a guy from Myst . We're sitting there . We're sitting there like dude . How can we help you ? How can we help you do this ?
Speaker 1And when we first got it associated to a new Google phone , to a Pixel , we negotiated 2.8 gigabit per second between the phone and the AP and we wanted to speed test that and throughput test it and we couldn't find a switch port fast enough to test .
Speaker 1It was the first time where we've been like the wireless is so fast we can't find a wired port to test it out with , because two and a half gig wasn't going to work . We needed a 10 gig port to test it and so we saw it work and it was great . But my point with this , as you mentioned , it wasn't just talking about what Wi-Fi 7 is capable of supporting . It's about the equipment that's capable of supporting the Wi-Fi 7 AP and some announcements supporting the Wi-Fi 7 AP and some announcements that have some of them have been leaked on Reddit already . You know talking about some of the new stuff that's out there some new switches , some new gateways , some new things that are pushing the limits when it comes to capability and capacity to move into the enterprise space to do that . So I'm not going to talk about what they were . I don't want to get anybody in trouble trouble here , everyone else has access to reddit , right ?
Speaker 3all right , yeah , just get on reddit . We didn't violate any ndas here .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah it's . But but hearing about it , it wasn't just saying , hey , we've got a new ap that does a whole bunch of internet right , here's some , here's some infrastructure to support that and I think the move into that infrastructure to support it is very , very strong . You know , uh , I'm excited to see that and so so tom's take on the on the wi-fi 7 stuff . He did say that there were 11 new skews coming out this year , 11 new wireless access points . That's , that's a lot of skews , man , if you stop and think about it . You know , I don't know in the q a if you all heard but maybe it was only y'all that asked the question about the reason that there was not an outdoor version of the unified seven . You heard why Because AFC is , because six gig isn't available yet . So why make an access point that's outdoor If you can't use six gig outdoor ? It's pretty common sense answer .
Speaker 3But yeah , but there's a new wifi standard and they talked about this as a standard that if it geolocates and there's bandwidth available in the six gigahertz , you will be allowed to use the non-overlapping channels for that , which I thought was kind of cool .
Speaker 1Yeah , and MLO is going to add I mean , like I said , when we saw it live it was dope . I mean seeing it aggregate from two , four , five gig and six gig 260 megahertz channels , one in five gig , one in six gig , and then a 20 megahertz channel in two , four , and so you know , the device is like okay , well , I'm going to send , you know , mouse clicks and keystrokes up to four , but I'm going to pull them down combined on five and six gig to get that throughput . It was pretty , it was pretty awesome to see . And then AFC you know he said that they're , that they're working with one AFC provider right now for the , for that frequency coordination .
Speaker 1And the quick story on that is these APs , when you turn on six gig , you don't have to go frequency assign them . You say , hey , go out and find which frequencies are available , use those available frequencies to operate on , and it checks back with that service every day to make sure that it's operating on a non-overlapping channel with someone around you . Now the key is that that's for the outdoor stuff , for the standard power , for any of the low power stuff , for the things indoor , you can still operate those on six gig at very low power without having to use that AFC . So there's ways . You still have to do some type of some level of channel planning and some type of wireless design to make that work .
Speaker 3But yeah , and something I want to note because I'm glad they brought this up and this helps both Ubiquiti and those of us that are installers . Going . Got some news for you If you have a client , really insist on a six gig . Six gig is even worse than five at going through walls . You got to put more in .
Speaker 1Yeah , but I will say okay . So I do take issue with that a little bit because if there's a great , you know , if you're not familiar with the tool Ekahau and the tool Hamina , both have done case studies on six gig versus five gig . So if you look them up on LinkedIn , look them up and they've taken , they've taken the same corridor , the same hallway , the same hotel room and they've modeled a six gig ap versus a five gig ap and it's very there . There's a little bit of difference , maybe not enough for another ap , and he was specific about that . Tom said if you want that , actually a full capacity coverage . But just , you know , do take .
Speaker 1Do take a look at the playing tools . And speaking of playing tools , we , you know , I kept trying to get an update from him out of wi-fi man and wi-fi man wizard to see if there was a new , a new version coming , because people were asking about multi-floor capability . I mean , it's definitely something that's needed , but you know there was . There's no solid answer there . I'm going to leave that one . I'm gonna leave that one there what did you say ?
Speaker 2nothing I can talk about . Yet there were a number of those replies it was uh ask me next year yeah , it was later .
Speaker 1Let's talk about this offline I love the one that was like just give me two weeks , like just two weeks . You know someone's talking about video camera standards and they're like you know . That would be a great tool . You should learn about that in about two months , you know yeah .
Speaker 2Well , there's a number of things also that I want to see them bring together from . You know , on the wi-fi side talk about on the planning stage . You know they showed off some some interspace stuff and whatnot . I've basically been saying that since they announced it . I need to be able to go from the ubiquity planning tool with one click and say I've installed it , now it's in interspace . Right now I have to rebuild the entire thing in Interspace . I'd like to be able to take a scan from Wi-Fi man and I'd heard something about this somewhere before the event . Maybe they've done it , but I'd like to be able to walk around with Wi-Fi man and say look , blueprint , upload . Now that's my floor map for Interspace or for the planning tool .
Speaker 1So you know one's gonna be difficult to talk about without revealing any product information . So so I think , the way that I , the way that I , you , know , let me get my beep out button ready .
Speaker 1Yeah , you know what ? It was awesome when you showed the baby baby , no , it was , you know it . No , it was basically saying they knew where the gateway sits today and they knew that they needed to move south . Right , they needed to move downstream to support smaller deployments that wanted it , and $100 for the gateway is incredible . But then he realized that you also need to move northbound in order to support all of this enterprise stuff that's going on , and so that's the , to be frank , that's the magical device that that would be amazing if it was , you know , if it showed up sometime would be to see something like that , and so so a lot of talk about what that would look like moving northbound into that enterprise space with a gateway that would support some of these newer things with with higher throughput and higher capacity . So it was .
Speaker 1It was good to see that . You know , he did . He did talk about the , the gateway , shaving years off of his life , and it there resonated with the crowd because a lot of us who deployed those looked at those and were like , ah , if only , if only , you know , but this was and and they're now in their second generation or third generation of gateways . Is it third ? I guess it'd be third generation .
Speaker 3I think that's kind of where they are If you look at , like the original USG . But I one thing I'll hats off to him again that self-awareness of them not being where they could be , where they need to be , and they completely recognize that there's many installers like myself that do these large scale projects . But I can't like myself that do these large scale projects but I can't . That's like a missing piece . Their gateway is not up to the task .
Speaker 3You know we do these 200 , 300 access point installs . There's not a UDM that supports 300 access points and the scale of clients . There's a bunch of wired stuff in between . That's just the access points . There's a ton of switches involved . There's a absolute massive client load on this . I'm not throwing a USG . This has got a full HA , more enterprise level firewall at the head end of it . That's very common for a lot of our installs . They were self-aware . They know that they make it all the way to that firewall . They're like cool , we sold you 300 switches and 1,000 APs and zero firewalls , that fits perfectly into that space .
Speaker 2Before you hit mega enterprise of I need more headroom , I need this device to be able to handle a lot more stuff . It's not necessarily a lot more clients , but it's a lot more APs , or it's a lot more cameras or it's a lot more . You know we want to do more with this and that's where I think the push to go there is coming from is . A lot of people are asking for it , but how do you define enterprise ?
Speaker 1yeah , and I think and and the thing that that that took me , that shocked me a little bit was not just the hardware to support what you , what you're talking about , and the services to support it , but some of the , some of the enhancements and the features and , yeah , I guess it's 8.0 right , or some of the new stuff that's coming out .
Speaker 1That's like here's , you know , imagine , imagine , imagine a world where you had a hardware platform that was capable of supporting all of this incredible throughput . Now you've got the horsepower to do some really interesting stuff , and I mentioned it . I said Gigamon style packet inspection , gigamon style SSL certificate inspection , coming along with the hardware that supports it , because that was key to me was looking at that and being able to see certain things and being able to see information that you couldn't see before , without how , because gigamon is a great product , but you're talking about dropping 50k on a , you know , on a , on a device , and this is something that's taking one of these incredible enterprise , you know , grade level services , things that that network administrators use and they want to use , and then being able to run that on a piece of ubiquity hardware it's like what .
Speaker 1So it was interesting to see that their thought process was hey , if we're going to upgrade the hardware , if we're going to start to move into enterprise grade hardware , then we need to start really looking at some services that are enterprise grade and seeing what we can apply onto that you know , theoretical hardware in order to make it work the way that enterprises will look at Kudos to that foresight . It was pretty cool .
Speaker 3Yeah , they feel like they're wandering into that space , but I seen someone bring up a question and this wasn't at all
Discussion on Ubiquity and Enterprise Solutions Speaker 3mentioned . There is like custom feeds for security and things like that . That's not really . They want to be able to do security and we get that . They want to keep it on this easy level . But they're going to realize very quickly . You know someone who deals with that exact scenario with a lot of clients . This is where ubiquity is not a fit , just a simple custom feed Matter of clients . This is where ubiquity is not a fit , just a simple custom fee Matter of fact . This is even something a lot of home users want is when it comes to like DNS filtering and things like that . You know we'll . We'll just say that people want to , they have those lists out there and they would like those custom feeds to not just type in some block sites but a constantly list of updated block sites that are imported in .
Speaker 2I've got a 12 year old dude , you know that landscape changes by the second .
Speaker 1Yeah , but that's a thing , is that it's such an interesting part of this conversation where it's like I just mentioned in the same 30 seconds , we're talking about a company that's trying to build enterprise grade hardware . Not trying , I mean , let's face it .
Speaker 1There's stuff that's getting there , but the request is not just for the enterprise . It's hey , I want to be able to look at what my kids are doing and stop that . At home or in a small business , you know , a daycare center or your school event or whatever it is that it's like it's something that moves across both of those levels . But and then and then no license . Right again , that's the part that is difficult to wrap your head around is how are you producing so much stuff and there's not a recurring revenue model ? And how ? Again to me , how does that work with the enterprise ? Where and it's been mentioned multiple times on the comments right , where it's ? How do you make room for distributors ? How do you make room for resellers ? How do you make room for partners ? How do you make room for MSPs ? How do you make room in in money ? Right , and and that's that's the problem that I that I didn't get an answer on at the event that was like , okay , that's why , on my little deal , I said what if they're saying that they're enterprise ready but they don't have the structure for that , not just support ? I'm talking about the channel , like I'm a huge believer in the channel . If you don't have a channel that can support you and everyone's just buying extra equipment and sticking it on the rack . That's not that . That doesn't . I can't sell that to a large grocery store or a large convenience store , or it's just a little bit difficult to do that . So where does that model fit into it ?
Speaker 1And I didn't hear any of that . But then I walked out . You know this wasn't to say at the end , right ? When you walked out , on the right-hand side there was the VIP room and in that room , I'm assuming , there were much higher-level discussions that were happening than what he was revealing on stage . So I don't know where that goes . But to move on to the next one , right , daryl , talking about FedExForum ?
Speaker 3Yeah , that was a great presentation he did Fascinating Earl talking about FedExForum yeah , that was a great presentation .
Speaker 1He did Fantastic , wonderful , yeah . It was filled with real , relevant information and I think that goes to talk about the scale of what's being done , the scale of the product being able to support the number of users . It was fun to listen to . It was fun to watch , not just from the Wi-fi side but from the switching the gateway side as well , seeing what he's doing , how he's routing that traffic um , just uh , I have some of the stats .
Speaker 2If uh , nobody is , here , yet from his talk . Uh , the ones that we can share is essentially , it's a , it's an arena . You know that's where the basketball team plays . Which fun fact ceo and founder of ubiquity robert owns the basketball team which shocking .
Speaker 3They're using ubiquity there .
Speaker 2Yes it's a wonderful case study . It's like I wonder what other , uh , unannounced and behind the same things we haven't seen are there . I almost want to make a trip and just like it's actually like a big test bed yeah , and he's .
Speaker 1And , by the way , daryl is open to not , you know , maybe not take you know , going to look into it together . But if you're , if you ever find yourself in memphis I know he is , he's such a kind guy , you know he threw his contact information up on the end . Uh , slide there . But if you're ever in memphis and you want to dig into that , I'm sure he would be happy , if he's home to , to help you out with that and the stats . You're gonna get to the stats , sorry . So the stats are .
Speaker 2It's approximately . I mean they . They see 18 000 people there and generally on a regular day , if it's sold out , which often it is , 18 000 people enter the arena at the same time . So there's 18 000 people all trying to connect to the wi-fi within a reasonable like within an hour . Essentially , uh , he's powering it with over 300 access points . He has 50 switches across 30 idfs , which is the distribution rooms , uh , and those are just for the access points , and then he has 20 nvr pros that are powering over 350 cameras it's nuts man yeah , I , I bet the request for um for stacking came from him .
Speaker 2He was like dude . I need to search all this now now right , I need , I need more uh so if that's the case , then maybe you know , fingers crossed , mvr stacking will get better over time so that we can , you know , scale it to 20 mvrs and beyond yeah , yeah , that's , you know that .
Speaker 1So so you know we do talk about this , this , the physical security side , and that was something that I there were so many people asking questions about that when , and and to set the scene right , I guess we didn't set the scene there . After every presentation , they opened it up to Q&A , which , in and of itself , was like that's fun You're doing that .
Speaker 3I stood up every time .
Speaker 1I got questions . There were questions I was leaning over to . I was sitting right behind Craig and Tom and Will . I was asking them questions . I was like , hey , I don't want to ask this in front of everybody , but what about this ? You know what I mean .
Speaker 2Well , Tom got handled . He asked the question to the handler and they were like fuck winners . I was sitting right next to Tom , so I had a problem with that .
Speaker 1I do want to go back and say something Alex Begary commented on YouTube . Ubiquity has moved 40% of their revenue direct to consumer through their website , which is up from 0% in 2012 . They have 38% to 50% gross margins . They can afford non-recurring revenue as long as they don't hire salesmen and copy other business models . Such an interesting takeaway , right , because publicly traded company information like that is available . It's interesting to think that they do have that much margin wrapped up in it so they could support something , but then it erodes components of that right . So how much are they willing to do to to get into that space ?
Speaker 2um , well , you get you know you get both sides of that right is , if you actually put together a partner program , we're already selling it , but it's not like we're necessarily beholden to it . I generally go for Ubiquity , because it's what I know best . It's what I recommend . But when you align yourself with a partner program and you actually have access to be able to support that and you're getting paid for that and as part of that agreement you're providing first-level support which then turns into more clients for your business , like that amplifies the channel that just can cause , you know , the sales to explode and then the money that they're losing paying us , you know , theoretically , from more customers Exactly so , to your point , they've got a lot of overhead , so I think that could work .
Speaker 1Yeah , go ahead that model
Enterprise Investments in Security Technology Speaker 1. Man , it was awesome to see , to see the guys from hostify there . Uh , you know , it was like talk about , talk about . Uh , you're talking about something that's like , oh , this is great . Oh , you introduced support , okay , well , well , they've already .
Speaker 2They've already addressed this a couple of times . It's like when , uh , immediately when , because the the support uh announcement it wasn't , wasn't new , it wasn't unique to this , it had happened a while back , two weeks ago , wasn't ?
Speaker 2paying attention . Oh , I thought it was longer than that , but anyway , they they were like , uh , yeah , the first time when we saw that we were like , uh , you know , oh , you know crap , like we're screwed . And then they went , they looked at it . It's like , well , look , they already have existing customers , they already have relationships with these folks and it's a different level of you know what's being offered there . There are a lot more hands on . They're offering hosting . Anyone who's hosting with them is going to get support through them .
Speaker 2And to my point to to the hostify team , and something that I mentioned in my video today , is that I am at a level where I need support , you know , on the really hard stuff , once a quarter , a couple times a quarter , whatever it is . I want to buy hourly blocks . I don't want to pay for a single site $1,500 a year . Now , granted , that comes out to $125 a month . That's actually a really good price for somebody who needs ongoing support . But I have over 100 locations . I'm not paying $1,500 a location every single year because I need help on two or three of them throughout the year . So I can get that with other providers that are able to do this . So , and that was addressed right . They're not too worried .
Speaker 1We talked about where and it it was Will that talked about that where , from a pricing structure perspective I think he was talking about hotels at one point where he said , if you own a whole bunch of hotels , you're not going to be billed per site per hotel , or whatever the case is . They need to rethink that of . Are you billed per site per property , or are you billed as the management group that has 15 different properties underneath them ? How are you paying that to take advantage of it ? So , so , okay , so Daryl talked about that , and then we moved into into physical security , and this is one that you know .
Speaker 1Andre got up , did a , did a really cool job . I thought it's such a , it's such a great story . So I'm going to , so I'm going to , I'm going to ask just a blunt question , right , because it's right , because it's . This is one that I heard a little bit of , and this is not an easy question . Uh , by any means , and that's , you know , from a , from a corporate strategy perspective , ubiquity has gone very wide , right , lots of different things , and and there were jokes about solar , there were jokes about poe lighting .
Speaker 1Let's go back it was like there's all these things and it's like and that . But but to be honest , that you know and and this came up with identity and it also came up with talk , because no one was mentioning talk and it was like and that was like I think you , like , there are a lot of people are like hey , dude , uh , that's a huge component yeah , we need to know , we need confidence on a roadmap for that that's okay .
Speaker 1So this is . That is one of the big enterprise quote-unquote thorns . On the side , it's like I'm going to make an investment , I'm going to put 400 sites on talk . I'm gonna put 400 sites on on , you know , pewy lighting , uh , you know whatever it is . And then , six months down the road , it's like now we're not gonna do that anymore . Whoa , whoa , uh , hold on . That's . That creates some , some enterprise issues . And that came up on the physical security side . It's like okay , well , how committed are you to identity , right ? And then and Robert did mention this and he talked about the birth of identity and why it did Because someone stood up and asked how are you going to compare to , are you ever going to move into , like Duo or Ookla or you know , or Okta or any of these things ?
Speaker 1Yeah , and so the question was answered kind of fuzzy , right , but not fuzzy in a way like we can't talk about fuzzy , in a way like I don't know if that's where we want to go . So , as much as I like the physical security stuff and the identity stuff , honest question is it worth making an investment in ? Is it going to be around ? Is it worth making an investment in ? Is it going to be around ? You know and I feel like I'm not the only one asking that question because it's not the core competency of the organization . It's like electric car chargers , like okay , you know .
Speaker 3Yeah , that's a weird one too .
Speaker 1But it's like should I make the investment and again , I'm not knocking , you , Don't take this as knocking Ubiquity , this is just asking questions that everybody , I feel like , is asking . It's like why would I make an investment in the physical security components of ubiquity , knowing the track record of saying , well , that's a pet project we're going to get rid of ?
Speaker 2and I think also . I think here you can look towards the competitor landscape . You know , um , the other major security camera surveillance companies are all going access . Ricotta has a huge access offering , others have massive access offerings and the reason for that is , I believe , because you want that deep level integration , the fact that I can say , okay , tell me when this person badged in now , show me the video , show me the camera . Yeah , that needs to happen instantly for me to be able to do an investigation that pulls up every time that person came in the building and has their badge information . Was it their badge , was it them ? You know , before I had to download a csv from an archaic system that only worked on prem and then compare the time codes , which were probably wrong , because it never connects to the internet to sync yeah , exactly , forget about daylight savings time , like that's all another problem .
Speaker 1And on that , note one of the . This is the only time I raised my hand . It was when they said no more questions . I was like god damn . It was the extensibility of this and being able to kick events out via json , xml , some type of api where it's like the license plate recognition thing is so dope , but I can't get to it . You know like I've got to run it's very young yeah , like OK .
Speaker 1Well , amongst all of the security things , you have to have extensibility and security in order to work with all of the other things . In my opinion and I don't see that that's it's not matured to that point yet , in my opinion it really hasn't , and the I get the impetus for wanting to go into that market one .
Speaker 3Just like you said , there's a need for it , there's a man for it . I don't want to have to compare disparate systems . The other side is we . One of our clients is a massive property management company that manages large buildings and the door access stuff is hot garbage . It's crazy what they pay for it , the subscription they pay for it , how poor it works and how old it is , and that it's all what they pay for it , the subscription they pay for it , how poor it works and how old it is , and that it's all based on like these stupid Java things with weird applets that you have to use control Like oh yeah , you still have the one system , we have an update , so you still have to use a internet explorer on a windows on an old windows because we haven't replaced it yet and it's like but even when you replace it you're like well , it didn't get much better .
Speaker 3So I think there's a demand in the market for that spot . But you have to stay committed , because when I say an old Windows XP machine running this , that is the long tail that comes with door access .
Speaker 3They set up the door access system 20 years ago . They're still using those same silly cards . But I don't blame them because ain't broke , don't fix . I hand a card out whenever I have a new tenant . Blame them because ain't broke , don't fix . I hand a card out whenever I have a new tenant . It's easy to manage and things like that . It's hard to get people to want to replace it , not to mention the cost per building of replacing . This is not cheap . Not cheap , that's right . It was a infrastructure project , don't worry , I'd like to bid it , but they wouldn't like to know what that bid is .
Speaker 1But that's the concern , right ? Is that if you're going to make that and granted , I think that you know , access control is one of those things that , just as you mentioned , you put it out there , you install it , it should work regardless of an Internet update . It should work for a very , very long time .
Speaker 2Well , I have seen that stressed a bit . It does Like , even if the Internet goes down , even if power goes down , as long as you still have power to the device , it remembers the codes , it will work .
Speaker 3But it's also sold differently , and this is where we separate from IT and Wi-Fi . Where I'm going to sell you something , I'm going to put it on , let's say , a five-year life cycle , that I'm going to hitch you up , it's going to go into my system and my sales . Your account manager is going to say hey , that Wi-Fi system is about five years old . About part of a refresh project is sold . You don't sell both phones , as we talked about talk or your infrastructure , internal stuff in the building , such as door access . You don't call them every five years and try and sell a new version of it . It's not how that works .
Speaker 1That's right . It just isn't and and you know , speaking of they , they did talk about the cameras and you know images have have shown up online about some of the new cameras and the stuff that's out there that that ptz is cool . I gotta say it's cool . I did . I did feel like um , I , the the person I was with was like that's really cool , but how is that going to handle a hurricane ?
Speaker 2you know , but there was some well go ahead . I was going to say to your point about weather . Here is back to the access control stuff . I was talking to a guy after after the the protect session and , um , he was saying that he's got a bunch of real estate and my client also one of my big clients also has a lot of multifamily apartment complexes and he said he's got access control deployed out there in Vegas and in the Vegas sun the badge readers simply melt . That's it , yeah .
Speaker 1You know this is the same thing with . You know what he gets to call it . It's the Tesla deal , where the ice froze over the door handle .
Speaker 3You know , as someone who owns a Tesla in one of those cold places that happened .
Speaker 1I had a Tesla , but in a very warm , so I'm down in South Texas , I'm down . I'm an hour 15 from SpaceX down here in South Texas it was about 12 below zero when I had a problem with my car .
Speaker 3No , not not your temperature range , I'm sure I'm in southern california .
Speaker 2I'm in a t-shirt . I don't know what you all are talking about I don't know anything with sleeves , well , chicago's the same weather as detroit , where I'm from .
Speaker 3So you come there in the winter and you're like why do people live here ?
Speaker 1well then , we moved on after after you know , and I don't know if you have any we can always jump back and talk about some of the physical security stuff . But then we moved on . After you know and I don't know if you have any , we can always jump back and talk about some of the physical security stuff . But then we moved on and we talked about that support and I think we've covered everything , all the highlights from that . You know they talked they had the release about the post-install support , the pre-install support .
Ubiquity's Support Options Review Speaker 1I feel like Will did a tremendous job of explaining the options that were available for pre-sale support and it's like when you put it all on one in one presentation , you put all on one slide , it's like , oh , you have all of these things covered . I didn't know that . I didn't know that there was one here and there was one here and there was one there . Um , so talking about the pre-sale support side was really cool . Um , it was . You know , there's , it's a , it's definitely a big bigger service offering than than some of the competitors in the marketplace , I'd say it's almost like a channel support option .
Speaker 3Yeah , pre-sale you know they do have . Uh , this is funny , this came on my forums . Uh , earlier today , of in three people reply right away like people selecting an mvr . They have a nice mvr selector . We're like someone's asking how do I pick which Unify NVR and which one I get , and et cetera . I love when a company takes the time to do that . This is . We've seen this with a lot of other companies .
Speaker 1Synology's got a pretty good one too .
Speaker 3Synology's got a great one . You can pick the apps , pick the things , pick the Keep , narrowing it down to the product base . And when your company offers a wide range of products , this is key , unless you want to sit there and pay a six-figure sales guy to try to sell it to me of what I need and go back and forth .
Speaker 1By the way , I don't like that experience .
Speaker 3I would much rather slide a slider . I need this many four cameras , this many of this . Just show me the boxes that will work with my configuration . Great , let me click buy it now . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2And that's good . No , no , go ahead . I was going to say that's something you know . An experience that I've had elsewhere as well when trying to spec out competing systems is they only have , you know , three outdoor camera options and they're all expensive . Not , not ubiquity , a competing platform , but it's relatively easy for me to say , okay , you want a telephoto , you want a dome , you want a bullet , and like that's it . It's done with ubiquity . I'm like , just just call me . Call me , I'll help you figure it out .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , it's , you know . And then he moved into the post-sale support side , which is which started . I mean , again , I come from from back in the day where the only person you could interface with with was the forum . It was not a person , it was the forum and there was nobody on there and it was just other users and it was , you know , show me your scars , I'll show you mine conversation . And that was okay .
Speaker 1But to move into what they're trying to move into , I think that they've made some of the right steps from a support side , but still there's no . You know , I look back and again this goes back to that partner conversation of if you're not being trained , if you're not being certified , if you don't inherently understand everything about the product and you're relying on them to constantly be providing the support , that creates an issue when you have a multi-tiered structure for getting into an account , right , you can't just always call them . But then again , right , conversely , look at where network as a service is going . It's saying if you have a problem , just call me . So what's old is new . Again , I guess this is now a cyclical conversation , but it was interesting to hear some of those and I haven't . I saw , I think , when y'all posted the pricing 1500 bucks a year is that what it was for site support , something like that .
Speaker 1So I don't remember if you go into the dashboard .
Speaker 2You can actually . Let me just pull up one of my sites here . Uh , 1500 per year per site weekdays 9 am to 5 pm central , and a three-year agreement is a 3800 per site for three years and then it also changes if you have emergency escalations 24 hours monday to friday . The 1500 a year per site goes up to $2,500 , and the $3,800 for three years goes up to $6,000 .
Speaker 1And then if you add on top of that , you can add the UI care on top of that to the different components to get expedited delivery and zero-cost shipping , things like that , I think is what I saw in there .
Speaker 2Yeah and that's all I mean . You just Google UI care and that all shows up , and then the site support . You just go to your unified dashboard and you click on the little , the new little support icon that's on the right .
Speaker 1The new little headset . Yeah , yeah , yeah , so that you know all's , I think my key takeaway well , I'd love to hear what y'all's keys . I think I've already stated mine a couple of times , but what were your key takeaways from this ? And Tom , I'll start with you . I mean , what do you think , what's your big takeaway from the UWC24 ? Give me that soundbite .
Speaker 3My soundbite is really this that I'm happy they're staying the course . They're not changing as a company in terms of their maturing as a company , but not maturing in the way that they see all their competitors . If you will do like more license fees , more things that turn into a pumpkin at midnight when you don't pay , uh , they've managed to avoid that . Which is man ? That's a feather in the hat of uh rob prayer there , because any other he's probably guys . I'm positive . Like there's a billionaires club where he hangs out with the other people and they're like dude , you know how much money you can be making with licensing fees . You're only worth . You know how many more commas would be in your name . You know where you'd be . Like there's , there's someone telling them that trust me , because I'm sure more money matters . Uh , it's just a way . It's like a bragging thing for how many commas you can gather . It's not even like what would you do with more money ? Well , I don't know , but you could have more commas , you could have the most commas .
Speaker 1Jesse , what about you , man ? What's your soundbite for your key takeaway from this event ?
Speaker 2So I'll second that and say that it feels like Ubiquity has really hit their stride . You know , they had kind of phase one of the company was a lot of the early stuff and the you know the five-pack Wi-Fis that they talked about before and that was difficult but used by a lot of people because it was something new , it was affordable , it was great . Then they had a whole bunch of new products which were the start of phase two , or you know even most of phase two , or you know even most of phase two , which got capped by COVID , and you had this massive problem of supply chain . I simply couldn't get stuff . When I came into the store for clients who could afford it I was buying inventory I was like you don't need it now , but when you do you're not gonna be able to get it to buy it now . That was really bad for Ubiquity and for the industry as a whole . I mean , Meraki was what a year out on .
Speaker 1Cisco stuff . It was terrible
Enterprise Readiness and Future Growth Speaker 1, it wasn't just .
Speaker 2Ubiquity , but Ubiquity in general because they don't have the ongoing stuff they need to keep selling to be able to maintain this and it feels now that I mean I stopped doing that practice .
Speaker 2Now , if I want to buy something customer needs something great go to the website and buy it . There are still a few things here and there , especially the new products , that are out of stock , but , to your point , like they figured out what works , they're doubling down on what works , they're expanding to fill the gap on both ends of the spectrum , which just means more options for us , and it really feels like this is the third phase you know , 3.0 , if you will of the company and it's only going to continue growing from here . The question is if they can manage to control their ever-expanding and wanting to go in lots of different directions and keep the focus to the massive amount of things they already do now and finish integrating everything so that it's amazing and then add new product lines and please , if you're listening , bring back PoE lighting . I think that's the future of infrastructure and lighting .
Speaker 3It's so easy Wi-Fi , they need lighting .
Speaker 2Yeah , and to be able to schedule all that through the network , through an app on my phone , like , yeah , I do all that in my house already . Let's bring that to enterprise , come on and I love uh goal 148 or goat 148 here yeah , trace commas three comma club man .
Speaker 3Yeah , I love it well , I'll stick .
Speaker 1I'll stick to mine . I think you know . I think my question is they're ? They're moving in the direction to get the hardware to a place where it can be considered enterprise ready and for a lot of people that have used it , people will say that it is enterprise ready . It's a lot of the enterprise that says it's not enterprise ready . More important , it's a lot of the competition that's saying it's not enterprise ready , when clearly there's places where it's installed , like what Daryl's done , you know , with the Grizzlies , where it's shown that it can handle it . I still think you know my question is is the organization ready to be enterprise ready ? And and and and I , I , that's my question , because they did not address that at the event , at least to us , in a way that I felt like gave me confidence to say , yeah , I can take 9,800 locations and put them all on this and not have to worry about it . So , and I'm not saying that they're that , they're not , I'm just saying that I didn't hear it Right , I didn't , I didn't hear something that made me go okay , that's , that's the signal that they're moving in that direction . I honestly wasn't expecting them to make the announcements for some of the enterprise grade stuff that they did , and so I was . I was genuinely surprised and thought , okay , this is a step Like you said . I like that .
Speaker 1This is version three , right ? Version one was the UISP stuff . Version two was getting in there and getting into SMB and doing a pretty bang-up job with it , and then this is round three . Where are they going with it ? I think that there are a lot of things that they need to do in order to get there and I think that they can do it .
Speaker 1I just think it's going to take a little bit of restructuring from an organizational perspective and that corporate ADD is just bad news , like it's just it . Really it's tough to do that , and I would imagine that it's tough for the people who I have done business with to say , yeah , I'm going to go in that direction when the company says , hey , I need to focus a little bit more . So I think they're starting to trim that in . Maybe those side projects get a little fewer and far between the beta site comes back and just throw it all in , just make a Ubiquiti sandbox and just put all the fun projects in there , don't release them , and then be like let's all , we're going to jump on this train and and then I'm just kidding , you know , I think that do the sandbox and send it to me .
Speaker 1So yeah , send me too but I think I think my biggest takeaway was you know they are , they are going to make a move and the signal for me was when they started dumping money in marketing . As soon as they started putting money in those commercials and into marketing and I understand that there's a season two coming up of the commercials , so uh , so get ready to laugh , uh , but you know , moving into that , I think that that it's showing signal that they are going to start to move into that enterprise space . I just want to see what the corporate component of that looks like , because the the products that we saw , I think everybody walked away impressed , I really do .
Speaker 3If they deliver them . I mean I've been sold before my salespeople .
Speaker 1Restructuring only occurs during a bankruptcy or a buyout . Well , I mean , there was no mention of bankruptcy or buyout .
Speaker 2I'd like to point out this event was free . They paid for all of that . We didn't buy tickets for this . Yeah , you couldn't . It was a ticket that money couldn't buy . Yeah , and it was at the ritz . Yeah , it was , it was . Let's talk about the food I mean , the food was great , man did you have ?
Speaker 1any of that , the soup , the tomato soup , but instead of croutons . It was miniature , it was little grilled cheese sandwich squares . I mean , yeah , that was pretty interesting .
Speaker 3They did the food well , so I was not unhappy with the food well , I don't know , uh , I don't know that any of us are going to be hitting april .
Speaker 1They've got looks like they've got a number of cities lined up for uh , for uwc coming up in april . It's all outside the us all right , they're all outside the us . Yeah , um , not on my to-do list let's see list .
Speaker 2I mean , if they want to send me , I'll go to Brazil . I'm not sure they're going to send me .
Speaker 1I've tended to be a little critical . Yeah , so if you're in this area , reach out to someone on social media . They did mention that they monitored their social media a lot . So London April 22nd , munich April 24th , stockholm April 26thai april 29th and singapore april 30th . Those are all to know . Those are two days apart , two days and two days , and two days than one day . That is going to be . That's a tour man , uh , but at the end of it it's going to be . It's going to be great . You can register if you go to uwcuicom . Seats are limited must must be reserved in advance . Limit of three per company . Lunch will be provided . Jump on the website . That's where you can register .
Speaker 1Guys , this was a lot of fun . Hey , a lot of fun For me to just walk into the world where you guys have been for a little bit . I do appreciate you taking the time to jump on and have this conversation . It was a great conversation . I really appreciate your perspective .
Speaker 3Thank you for having us .
Speaker 2Yeah thank you very much . And I dropped the links that we mentioned in the chat on YouTube as well . Beautiful , beautiful .
Speaker 1Okay , well , I'm going to take this . I'm going to publish this out on my podcast channel , so it'll be available . My podcast is Waves with Wireless Nerd wirelessnerdnet . If you have any questions about wireless stuff , feel free to reach out . Find me on linkedin , feel free to hit me up , um , but that's where you can find me . How about you guys ? What , what ? Tag your social medias real quick . What , what are your handles ?
Speaker 2good , yeah , so I dropped mine in the chat as well . I'm at tab geeks , uh , on well , on twitter , but I use , uh , mr jay nolan , more on twitter . I'm on linkedin . I'm on pretty much everything , and on youtube I'm tab geeks and um , uh , yeah , I do this pretty much everything , and on YouTube I'm tab geeks and um , uh , yeah , I think that's pretty much everywhere .
Speaker 3Yeah , everything for me is uh at Lawrence systemscom . You go there . You'll find links to all my socials and forums and all the places you can find me .
Speaker 1Awesome , Awesome , Well y'all .
Speaker 3I really appreciate this yeah , links won't show for us to say I don't think , yeah , I'm just a contributor .
Speaker 2You gotta , you gotta , actually , uh yeah , sorry about that but we're not we're not hard people to find .
Speaker 3Tab geeks is easy , you'll find yeah literally my username in the chat .
Speaker 1So yeah , right well , this was awesome y'all . Uh appreciate the time . For anyone listening , please feel free to reach out . This was a lot of fun . I look forward to seeing you all . You know when , when and if they do this again , I look forward to seeing y'all there . If not , uh , we'll keep up with each other online . So for now , thanks for listening . Have a wonderful evening . Uh , we'll talk to y'all soon . Thank you , bye , y'all .