Wi-Fi guru leaves AeroHive for AirTight

AirTight Networks have revealed the hiring of Devin Akin as Chief Evangelist, in a bid to bring fun back into enterprise Wi-Fi.

With over 15 years of experience in the WLAN market and 20 years in IT, Akin moved to Aerohive Networks in 2009, where he served as Chief Wi-Fi Architect and Evangelist for four years - championing cloud and controller-less Wi-Fi technology.

"With Ruckus having gone IPO and Meraki gobbled up by Cisco, AirTight is the next hot company in Wi-Fi," Akin says.

"AirTight is well-positioned to take on the Wi-Fi market with its cloud-based Wi-Fi that is incredibly easy to provision and manage.

"AirTight's Wi-Fi solution is ideal for distributed enterprises with limited IT staff and budget.

"The company's differentiators - plug-and-play deployment, ease of management, top-notch security right out of the box, and low cost - trump higher-end solutions in this space."

Coming on the heels of a new US$10m funding round in July of this year and company's Wireless Field Day debut earlier this month, the company expects the move to set off speculation in Twittersphere as to whether AirTight is the next business to watch in the enterprise Wi-Fi space.

"We believe that the WLAN market is still in early stages of development," says David King, Chairman and CEO, AirTight.

"Following "fat AP" and controller-based architectures, we now see a new wave emerging - cloud-managed Wi-Fi, - which will take it to the next level, especially in highly distributed environments where Wi-Fi did not exist or was sub-par.

"Devin will play an instrumental role in evangelizing the AirTight technology and in accelerating AirTight's growth as the leader in cloud-managed Wi-Fi."

Akin will use his experience in the WLAN market to amplify AirTight's brand through evangelism, channel expansion, business development, training, and technology strategy, while keeping customer experience top of mind.

"As a vendor, you know that you've arrived when your customers find your system downright fun," Akin says.

"Fun to configure. Fun to monitor. Fun to upgrade. AirTight is making enterprise Wi-Fi fun again. And I want to be part of this exciting ride."