According to IDC the mature traditional enterprise WLAN market represents an opportunity in cloud-managed wifi hardware and software, a market set to grow from $653 million in 2014 to $2.5 billion in 2018.

"Enterprises are seeing the big picture and definitely considering cloud-managed wifi for their remote sites when upgrading their networks," the analyst says. "These upgraded network architectures can accommodate unique needs around bring your own device (BYOD), scalability, application visibility and management."

Driving cloud-managed wifi growth are increased midmarket and distributed enterprise adoption in verticals including retail and K-12 education. Cloud-managed wifi is attractive from a mainenance perspective (it allows for automated provisioning and configuration) and belies the "everything as a service" enterprise IT trend.

It also helps shift spending from capex to opex, the analyst continues.

Vendors and channel partners can enable simplified cloud-managed wifi deployments as part of extensive managed service offerings.

Go Cloud-Managed Wifi Market to Reach $2.5bn by 2018 IDC Says