The big interview
11
Continuous connectivity
for always-on networks
George Mulhern, CEO and chairman of the board at Cradlepoint, talks to Charloe Hathway
about why SD-WAN is coming to the fore in a broadband-first world
Twitter:@Land_Mobile | www.landmobile.co.uk | February 2020
“This is all orientated
around having the
connection up all the
time… that’s the special
sauce we have in our
software-defined
modems”
Cradlepoint is a pioneer when it
comes to wireless, with its LTE
wide-area network (WAN)
products used by organisations
looking for 24/7 connectivity. Its
leadership in the space is so pronounced
that when Cisco launched its first
wireless WAN cellular gateway last
year, a company spokesperson said it
was filling a gap in its Meraki portfolio
that partners had been plugging with
Cradlepoint gateways.
Today, more than 18,000 enterprises
and government organisations use
Cradlepoint solutions. That includes half
of the Fortune 100 and 3,000 police, fire
and ambulance services. The company’s
CEO, George Mulhern, explains: “Our
philosophy is anything that can be
wireless ultimately winds up wireless.”
That philosophy stretches into every
aspect of Mulhern’s life. “I’ve just had
the opportunity to eliminate the last
set of wires from my life. I had a set
of noise-cancelling earbuds that were
wired to my phone, but now have these
little white things that stick out of my
ears called AirPods. That’s the last set
ofwires.
“I have a wireless mouse, I have a
wireless keyboard, I have a wireless
LAN at work. What we always come
back to is that, once you reach a certain
performance and price point, it always
goes to wireless. It’s more flexible, it’s
easier to deploy, it’s easier to manage. It
makes you more agile. The same thing
is happening in wide-area networks
rightnow.”
Existing LTE capabilities and the
promise of 5G, Mulhern explains, are
fundamentally changing how networks
are built. He says: “Our long-term view
of what’s going to happen to the widearea
network is that it’s going to be a
converged edge, where it’s no longer just
about connecting your branch oces,
it’s about connecting all your vehicles
and connecting things. It’s going to be
this hyper-connected world. That’s what
we’re building our solution platform for.”
He adds that, because of the need
to manage 100 times the number of
endpoints, the platform will have to be
cloud-delivered and include automation.
That influx of connections, Mulhern
explains, will also create demand
for networks built on a softwaredefined
architecture.
Cradlepoint’s answer to that need
is NetCloud, which includes softwaredefined
wide-area network (SD-WAN)
capability. Mulhern says: “NetCloud
includes a cloud-delivered management
solution that orchestrates the network
– configuration, firmware updates,
security updates, things like that. It also
provides analytics of what’s happening on
your network, such as the throughput
performance, and then within that we
have a set of security services that spans
firewalls, ISP IDs, content filtering, and a
set of routing services.”
The basis for LTE connectivity,
Mulhern explains, is chips by companies
such as Qualcomm. When those chips
are used in mobile phones or laptops,
those devices can go into low-power
mode when they aren’t being used,
and it is also acceptable to do frequent
hard resets. Those aren’t options for a
mission- or business-critical WAN. As
such, Cradlepoint uses Qualcomm chips,
but strips out the software and replaces
it with its own proprietary software.
Mulhern says its software is designed
to ensure organisations can understand
exactly what is happening with their
modems – whether that is a signal
starting to degrade or if the signal
could be improved by switching tower.
Mulhern says: “This is all orientated
around having the connection up all the
time – that’s very important for firstresponders.
That’s the special sauce we
have in our software-defined modems.”
He adds: “Frankly, I think we’re the
only company in the world that can meet
a 24/7, always-up enterprise use-case.”
This shift to software-defined
networking also means that customers
benefit from new capabilities and
new functionality every three weeks.
Mulhern highlights that “with the old
model, you bought your products,
you put your network together, and
then that’s what you had. This way, it’s
continuallyevolving.”
Cradlepoint solutions have been
adopted by numerous public safety
organisations in both the US and the UK,
but emerging critical broadband projects
present new opportunities. There is
potential to deliver an improved voice
and data service for the emergency
services, but this needs to be done in
a way that ensures data costs do not
become excessive.
Mulhern explains: “A challenge for
a lot of first-responders is that their
vehicles are now filled with sensors.
/www.landmobile.co.uk