By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
One of the most important recent Wi-Fi industry advancements has been the emergence of several innovative startups introducing new tools designed to simplify Wi-Fi planning, surveying, and design workflows. Among them, newcomer Sidos is inventing new processes to reduce cost and complexity of carrying out Wi-Fi service validation. Sidos ‘Deep Survey’ solution reduces validation to a simplified process saving thousands of dollars on travel and labour costs associated with site visits, the company says.
Few segments of the Wi-Fi engineering market are more ripe for disruption than Wi-Fi design and validation software tools – and newcomer Sidos’ ideas are reshaping the technology and economics of delivering professional Wi-Fi deployment services. For example: There is often no way to get around service validation as even well designed Wi-Fi networks require frequent attention. Performance drifts and degrades over time while traffic patterns evolve and grow, Sidos says.
“To deploy and maintain professional Wi-Fi networks, companies spend a great deal of money outsourcing surveys and validation, including travel expenses for sending Wi-Fi experts across the country,” says Konstantin Khitrik, Sidos CMO and co-founder. “We also frequently see deployments requiring rework because of poor initial data and time wasted on manual processes. At a time when skilled staff are scarce and many enterprises are under financial pressure, this is not how you want to spend your money,” he says.
Among the most valuable of Sido’s innovations is the introduction of the handheld Sidos Wave measurement device. For any high-quality indoor Wi-Fi deployment, making accurate measurements is fundamental to good Wi-Fi designs and this requires instruments designed for the purpose. “Measuring Wi-Fi signals consistently and accurately is non-trivial and dedicated hardware is required. The Sidos Wave is both an accurate and professional RF measurement device and at the same time can be operated by non-experts through a simple user interface,” Konstantin Kithrik says.
Saving thousands on expert site visits
Sidos says its predictive modeling capabilities reduce the process of Wi-Fi service validation to a small number of measurements carried out by non-expert staff in a few pre-defined locations. Sidos calls this ‘Deep Survey’ and says it is powerful because it avoids having to spend money and time on dispatching Wi-Fi engineers across the country – and the results are sufficiently accurate for validation.
“Experts are needed to create a validation plan, meaning determining the few places where on-site measurements are required. The measurement locations are then loaded onto the Wave device, and the device is shipped to the site. After that, any person at the site will be able to complete the task using the Wave, and the results are uploaded to the Cloud for review by the experts. Using this method, the cost of network validation per location can be as low as $200. Compare this to perhaps $2500 when an expert needs to be dispatched,” he says.
Sidos offers a simplified business model that includes one fee per year (currently US$2988) covering one Wave measurement device – that can be used by anyone – along with access to the Sidos Cloud for three users. In this way the costs are fixed and predictable, Sidos says.
The company says it currently serves hundreds of enterprise customers – including numerous Fortune 500 companies – and that its customer base continues to grow rapidly. Founded in 2021 by former Ekahau executives Mika Hakala and Konstantin Khitrik, Sidos was created to bring new levels of automation and efficiency to Wi-Fi planning, surveying, and validation. Read more about Sidos Deep Survey here.
/Claus.
