You’ve heard of Linksys, everybody has. But Tanaza? Is that an energy drink? No, but it is what fuels Linksys’ latest go at cloud-managed Wi-Fi. Let’s get the Tanaza thing out of the way first, then we’ll talk about what Linksys is up to (if you’ve had with expensive vendor license paradigms, you’ll want to read on).

Tanaza Explained

Tanaza is a cloud-managed networking platform based in Italy, I’ve been tire-kicking and following the evolution of the Tanaza system for a while now, Here’s a blog I wrote on Tanaza, to get you started. I like the company, their people, and the UI. As an enterprise WLAN guy myself, I sometime have to stretch my mind to get the appeal of a company that (so far) only manages Wi-Fi and not “the full network stack”, but once you get that it’s easy to appreciate Tanaza’s effectiveness. Recognizing a company’s Wi-Fi as the thing that many SMB customers interact with the most with, Tanaza makes providing well-managed and feature-rich WLAN environments easy for single sites or distributed locations likely served by MSP types or savvy in-house staff that need the most for their precious network budget dollars.

Linksys Cloud-Managed Wi-Fi 2.0

As a reminder, Linksys is part of Belkin, which is part of Foxconn. You of a certain age may be pre-disposed to think of Linksys as a home router vendor, but the company has long since evolved to having business-grade products in several spaces. With its latest strategy for cloud-managed WLAN, Linksys replaces it’s old in-house magic with Tenaza’s very polished dashboard and management framework and pairs it with a so-far modest handful of decent indoor 802.11ac wireless access points.

So what is the actual news here?

Tanaza has the cloud-management thing down pretty well. The case can be made that Foxconn/Belkin/Linksys using Tanaza’s framework validates Tanaza’s suitability for the SMB/MSP masses. The Linksys empire includes manufacturing, support, various channel relationships, and the ability to capitalize on Tanaza’s native cloud goodness to offer a decent SMB solution at compelling prices. And what makes those prices compelling? Probably the biggest selling point is that no licenses are required when you compare to other cloud-managed solutions. In my opinion, many of the bigger guys have gotten so license-happy they have priced themselves out of the SMB market.

Good Stuff, But Is It Enough?

Linksys Cloud Management 2.0 promises unlimited scaling (again, think MSP), easy pre-configurations and new access point adds (think Meraki-style), and has a good road map for options that will help customers to either directly or indirectly monetize their guest WLAN environments. All that sounds good when you can get it for cheap with no licenses, and I will say that the Tanaza access point I’ve been running works well. But I also can’t help but think that sooner or later “cloud managed Wi-Fi only” is going to be an issue for some potential customers. Even Open Mesh, before they were acquired by Datto, had a pretty effective cloud managed switch and edge router offering to go with their wireless APs, as does Ubiquiti- who is always the elephant in the room in this space. An outdoor AP option with external antenna capabilities would also be nice.

Linksys Cloud Manager 2.0 web page