What is our primary use case?
We are resellers and platinum partners from LANCOM Systems.
My customers' main use cases for LANCOM Management Cloud are quite diverse. We have small businesses with five employees, and we have much larger companies that use LANCOM with us because it's the sole brand we are using. As mentioned previously, it's really important that the data collected on the network has to be secure, and we don't want prying eyes. If you look at the American brands with the Patriot Act, they all have a backdoor installed. We never know if some government is looking at our customers. With LANCOM Systems, because LANCOM Systems is bought by Rohde & Schwarz in Germany, it's a really large company. Everything is made by LANCOM and the locations where they store their data are always in Germany.
Regarding monitoring and reporting functionality in the platform, the reporting can be better. If you use the LMC to troubleshoot, it's great. You can log into every device and there is a report capability, but it's not as elaborate as systems from major vendors Ruckus or Extreme. I think they do a better job. The system for Wi-Fi, for instance for the ARC, works so well that most of the sites we deploy, we deploy them and log in every few months to see if everything is going as it should. We do that proactively and we have nearly zero calls from our customers saying they have issues.
What is most valuable?
The scalability is not an issue at all regarding LANCOM Management Cloud hybrid networking support, as long as the products are from LANCOM. In Germany, they have sites with more than 10,000 different branch offices. One of the major telecom operators in Germany works with LANCOM systems. If they have to change a certain parameter, you only have to do it once and you can push it to all the devices.
One of LANCOM's strengths is they have several ways to manage their systems. For small systems where customers don't want additional monthly or yearly fees for the LMC, that's possible. When a customer grows and wants to connect multiple offices, you don't have to renew the firmware. Every LANCOM device can be used standalone, with the controller, or with the LANCOM cloud management system without buying new equipment or updating firmware.
The LANCOM Management Cloud is great for normal businesses that have from one to 500 employees, it works perfectly.
What needs improvement?
The integration of LANCOM Management Cloud with on-prem resources for hybrid environments needs improvement. The LMC has been in development for about five years. Compared to Mist systems, the big vendors are better integrated. For Wi-Fi analysis with Hamina, for instance, it can connect through an API with Ruckus, Cisco, or Aruba, but they don't do that with LANCOM systems yet. The APIs are well-documented, but you have to implement them yourself.
For very large venues that need integration with other parties, the integration could be better. It's a matter of resources, as LANCOM systems doesn't have the capacity of Cisco. It's a smaller company, more of a niche player, but they do it really well. Their focus is on quality of devices and digital sovereignty. Every six weeks there is a new version of the LMC with new features added. Since the LMC is cloud-based, updates happen automatically in the background.
For large projects, LANCOM is quite cooperative in writing custom APIs. For example, if you have a project with 500 access points, 20 switches, and some firewalls, and you need specific API support, they will develop it if the project is large enough. They are also quick to resolve issues - we once had a bug in a school installation with 150 access points, reported it on Monday, and had a solution by Wednesday.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with LANCOM Management Cloud for about four years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of LANCOM Management Cloud is absolutely rock solid. Once it's connected, it stays connected. We installed switches and access points from LANCOM Systems for a Coldplay concert at the King Baudouin stadium in Brussels three years ago. The products are extremely reliable, with very low breakdown rates.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For really large implementations, LANCOM Management Cloud might not be the best choice, but they don't target those extremely big venues. They aim to cover 80 to 85% of the market. The really upper market, the extremely big implementations, isn't LANCOM's target market, which aligns with our business model as we don't target them either.
How are customer service and support?
The support is great because we have platinum support. There are different tiers of support: bronze partner, silver partner, gold partner, and platinum partner. The level of support depends on your status. With platinum status, we can send emails through the portal indicating urgency and criticality. We also have a direct connection with LANCOM systems, including a specific number and PIN code. Through that PIN code, they see our partner status, and within five minutes, we have a LANCOM employee on the line who really knows how to address issues.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The setup complexity for LANCOM Management depends on product familiarity. If you do the training with LANCOM Systems, which is essential as they have their specific German methodology, it becomes manageable. They offer online training and instructor-led in-class training that explains programming in detail. For someone coming from another brand with zero knowledge of programming LANCOM systems hardware, it can be challenging. Implementation through the LANCOM Management Cloud is easier than local programming through the graphical user interface.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The costs for LANCOM Management Cloud are really reasonable. Compared to Ruckus, it's about half the price.
What other advice do I have?
The LANCOM SD-WAN is quite new and more suitable for very large venues with numerous interconnected sites. We don't have much experience with it as most of our customers have one to three sites, as Belgium is not that large.
I work with LANCOM Management Cloud daily. One of its best features is the Active Radio system on Wi-Fi, ARC 2.0. For large venues with hundreds of access points, the system can automatically optimize Wi-Fi performance by analyzing interference and suggesting best practices. The Zero Touch Provisioning feature works excellently, requiring only the MAC address and serial number for device setup.
My rating for LANCOM Management Cloud is 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
