Most service providers probably don’t share Doug Klein’s vision of the wired
world circa 2010. The chief technology officer of Vernier
Networks expects that all computer users will be wireless, data networks
will have borrowed a page from cell phone companies to run customer premise
access nodes, and Vernier’s technology will be the foundation of this new world
order as a dominant security architecture.
So far, two-year-old Vernier has been able to sell this vision to financial
backers, who invested about $35 million into the venture — most of it during the
telecom drought of last year. While scathed by telecom, investors were excited
about Vernier’s vision of the wired world becoming unwired.
In a nutshell, Vernier expects that ten years from now, most companies ride a
wireless wide-area network across office buildings and throughout the nation,
allowing the ranks of consumer Internet users tapping into wireless POPs at home to grow
exponentially.
To meet the demand for wireless access, enterprise IT departments and service
providers will have to guarantee security and proactively manage access profiles
of network users. Vernier makes equipment designed to do just that, and investor
optimism is rooted in the belief that today’s average $100,000 Vernier
installation will, in the future, become a more ambitious $1,000,000
installation.
“In a strange way, the convergence that we have been talking about for the
last 10 years is happening, but it is happening because of this funny thing
called 802.11,” said Klein.
