Future Proofing Your School's IT Infrastructure

Welcome, everyone.

Good morning, afternoon, evening,

wherever you are in the globe,

wherever you're joining us from.

I'm Kelsey Watson with Atlas, the Association

of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools.

And today we're really excited

to have this sponsored webinar from Meter, um,

meter is one of our vendor partners,

and they bring a wealth of IT, knowledge

and expertise to our community.

So, without further ado, I'm going to hand it over

to Max Duran from Meter to Kick things off.

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Kelsey.

Uh, appreciate everyone joining today and,

and those that will watch, uh, sometime in the near future.

Thanks for being with us.

Uh, today we are gonna be talking about future proofing your

school's IT infrastructure.

Um, don't worry, I I will try

and make this as, uh, unbiased as possible,

even though my shirt says a brand.

We're just gonna talk about network as a service

holistically and how that wave of, um, uh, technology

and service offering can really benefit, uh, the schools

that we partner with.

So, I wanna make sure, uh,

I'm gonna shrink this down a little bit.

I wanna make sure that I can introduce some of the peers

that will be speaking with me today.

So, my name's Max Duran. I'm on the left.

Uh, I look after our community of customers and,

and partners, uh, in the Bay Area in Pacific Northwest.

Along with me from Meter is Tyler Crowley.

He is our solutions engineering leader.

Uh, Tyler has had a long history, uh,

with the networking world.

He spent time at big box retailers.

He spent time at traditional manufacturers.

He spent time at security camera vendors, uh,

but we're happy to have him with us today.

Uh, sneak preview to the end of the call.

Tyler will actually be doing a live demonstration

of the meter dashboard as well as meter command,

which is our new generative UI tool.

Uh, so please make sure that you,

you bear with us to the very end.

We'll have a nice dialogue in between, uh, the beginning

and the end with two individuals on the call as well.

One being Tom Wildman.

Uh, Tom is the founder and CEO of Knowing Technologies.

He's been in the, um,

bay Area technology world for quite some time.

Uh, before knowing Technologies.

Tom was actually a in, in your shoes.

Uh, Tom was a director of technology at an independent

school, uh, in the Bay Area.

Ryan Madada, Jasick is also gonna be with us today.

He is in your shoes.

Uh, Ryan is, um, uh, a network as a service consumer.

Uh, he's a director of technology at Key Schools in

Palo Alto, California.

Uh, before being in Palo Alto,

Ryan spent over a decade on the East

Coast in a similar role.

And, um, before that came from more

of a classroom background.

So hopefully you'll have a holistic view of, uh,

what a vendor might say,

what a customer might say in your position, as well as what,

uh, a technology service provider might say about

what future-proofing could look like in a

network as a service world.

So, uh, I wanna start by talking about it and networking

and the challenges that that teams tend to face.

Um, I know this to a degree, uh, I spent, you know,

almost a decade at a, what I will call a traditional vendor.

Um, and what we've, what we've run into is quite often, uh,

our, our, our customers

and our partners are working with many different vendors.

You've, you've got one here, one there and,

and some more everywhere.

It tends to be a very complicated environment.

Uh, you have hardware refresh cycles that are untimed.

You have to have funding for some of these vehicles.

Tends to be one where it is often even hard

to track when your license renewal is coming up.

Uh, when is the lifecycle of these devices,

when something end of sale is this on the latest firmware?

Uh, a lot of challenges due to the fact

that over time there's been more, um, indi individual

solution providers and, and not a lot

of vertical integration.

Another thing that we see is demand keeps going up, uh,

in terms of number of devices that are on a network,

especially on campus, the amount of things, the internet

of things that are continuing to connect to the environment.

What we are also seeing is

that you are not necessarily getting more headcount

to keep track of all of those devices.

Uh, so in most cases, a lot of our education partners are

one person shops, uh, in some cases, not just it

that they're responsible for.

Uh, you may be responsible for some of the operations

of the facilities and,

and functions of that nature on campus,

which really just pulls you further

and further away from the backbone of, of

what your campus needs.

Lastly, but definitely not least, um, there is a level in,

in, in a traditional sense, there's a level of inflexibility

that, um, manufacturers are providing today,

selling you a metal box that they don't own lifecycle on.

They're not giving you additional, uh, hardware benefits.

They are rolling firmware upgrades,

and the technology is getting smarter,

but the boxes, they're not getting any better, that

that responsibility falls onto your shoulders.

They have a huge capital cost in some cases, where you have

to pay attention to

what your budget cycle looks like in a very, very close way.

And sometimes you have to make tough decisions.

You may be buying gear that, uh, is unlicensed.

You may be buying gear that you actually don't want to,

but you have to due to budget cycles

and the increasing cost of licensing fees.

A lot of organizations are looking

to become software companies

and replacing a lot of the hardware gains that they had

with software licensing.

All of these things are challenges

that are ultimately on your plate.

Uh, and that's where I felt, and,

and we as a network, as a service provider feel

that there is a, a more productive way to manage some

of these challenges, especially when we think about future

proofing the environment.

So schools can benefit from turnkey solutions.

Uh, ultimately, networking

as a service should provide a couple

of differentiators in terms of both hardware and software,

but also operations.

Uh, we'll go into throughout the conversation what some

of these buckets might mean.

But ultimately, vertical integration, no longer having a box

that does this, another brand that does that,

and another solution with knobs that does this thing.

Having a single pane of glass that by default allows

you control without being gated,

but also provides a level

of accountability on the manufacturer

that really hasn't been there to date.

You may be interacting with some of the support teams,

but that's reactive network

as a service should be proactive.

We should be helping to alert you when there is a challenge

so that as your world becomes more complicated

with different devices and different needs,

you aren't having to keep track of every little thing

that's happening across your network,

rather than having large capital costs where you have

to make sacrifices on, well, do I upgrade my cabling?

Can I afford those security cameras in

that new access control system?

Or do I need to buy X amount of switches today?

Instead of having that huge capital cost network

as a service provider should be able

to give you a monthly subscription, which hopefully

allows you to increase the value of that service.

Now, key word there is service.

Uh, the software has to allow for

a continued innovation on the product,

which allows both the network provider as well as you

as the consumer of this technology, the ability

to operate your network.

It should be generative,

it should be telling you when things are offline, as opposed

to you having to have someone tell you when

something is offline.

We should be able to layer additional security filters into

your network, as well as providing the hardware benefit

in terms of lifecycle management.

From an operational perspective, your network

as a service provider, your solutions provider should be

thinking about this holistically.

If you have cabling that's 10, 15, 20 years old,

the box that you put on the other side of

that cable can only perform to a certain standard.

Speeds have gotten there.

There's new standards of cabling,

just like those new standards of wifi,

new standards of cabling.

Are you patching one part of the dam only

to expose the flaw in another part of the dam?

That is what you, you should not have

to sacrifice, is my point.

When you think about future proofing,

you think about not just the technology,

but the infrastructure of the space.

You think about the quality of both sides leading

to more success of, of the operations team upgrades.

So one thing that, um, I think is, is often, uh,

confusing about a network model, uh, that Ryan will be able

to talk about at, at keys is lifecycle management.

Future proofing is the day that I buy

that metal box is the dumbest day that that box, uh, is.

Uh, we think about, um, security cameras and,

and needing p oe plus plus,

if you've got a certain cloud vendors now produce,

um, multi-sensor cameras.

Those p oe plus plus switches,

they didn't exist five years ago.

So if you bought your switching infrastructure five years

ago and you're doing a camera refresh, you have

to now consider both sides of that equation.

Hardware upgrades should be embedded.

Your provider should grow with you as your needs change.

And ultimately, you want to be able to have experts on hand

that are proactively supporting the environment with you.

Not just the proactive alerts,

but also sharing best practices across a, our community

of educators have found that these ways to

have your VLANs communicate these types of

routing rules tend to be more effective.

This type of organization

or orientation of your network is what's gonna optimize

because not everyone in in,

in our community is a technology expert.

Not everyone in the community knows every piece

of the job, a hundred percent.

A lot of us are making due with what we have,

and that's not a great solution for the future.

So we'll talk to Ryan at Key School today.

He'll give us a firsthand experience with

how a model like this has supported him.

I'll call out two others just

because some of the folks on the call may be in a,

a different position than Ryan.

Key School has two campuses. Uh, I got about 300 students.

Some of you may have much larger footprint,

so I'll talk about web school.

Uh, it's in Knoxville, Tennessee.

It's an independent school out there.

They've got every day, uh, that they run a network.

They've got about 1600 devices that connect to that network

on their high population days.

Think events, graduations, symposiums.

They have about 6,000 devices that connect to

that network across 17 buildings, a few acres.

The campuses, that network is one that is powered

by a network as a service provider.

That network has all of the benefits

that we're talking about here.

It's a bespoke hardware that is custom built,

vertically integrated provides a software-centric

environment that the team at web school can manage,

but they can also rely on their vendor.

And from an operational standpoint,

there is an entire refresh of the cabling infrastructure of

that organization to modernize them

for the fact of future proofing.

That's a very large example. Let's go into a smaller one.

Higher ground education is, they run, um, a series

of Montessori schools across the United States.

Those schools tend to be very small.

They've got a dozen to a few dozens, uh, students at those,

um, call 'em campuses.

Their needs are very different.

They need high levels of flexibility.

They need a solution that was project managed for them

because they don't have technology advisors

or providers in all the locations of their campus.

And that's really why they turn to a networking, uh,

provider, like a network as a serve.

We'll get into the technology quickly here.

And then I want to bring in Tom to the conversation, uh,

given his background.

So architecture is something that is, is a part

of the future proofing conversation.

Um, we talk about the idea of today.

A lot of you on this call

or recording may have different pieces

of hardware across your wireless infrastructure.

You may have different vendors across

your switching infrastructure.

You likely have one vendor on the security appliance side,

but that distributed environment causes complexity.

It causes a lack of understanding

because in some cases, either yourself

or your technology provider has to have certifications.

You have to have little acronyms by your name to be able

to manage some of these devices.

Ultimately, simplicity is what drives the future in our,

in our opinion building our building your own is,

is fundamental to the network as a service provider.

Gain, uh, hardware should be bespoke.

It should be purpose-built, it should not be white labeled.

The ability to build your own hardware

and write your own software should allow you, you

as customers, you as consumers, you as operators.

It should allow you the control

to manage your own network when you want to,

but also provide the ongoing service

and the ongoing assistance

and the ongoing level of accountability

of a networking provider to have your back.

Whether you want to take a little bit of a break

and go on a vacation, or you have three other burning

priorities that you can't rotate the password on your s

that you know that you're planning for a camera upgrade

and you wanna pres segment some VLANs so

that you have an easier time onboarding those devices.

If you do want to own those responsibilities, that work

as a service should give you the capability to do that.

You should be able to operate today

and tomorrow with what you have and what you know.

The difference is, you shouldn't have to always

have that responsibility.

It should not be a burden. It should be an option.

And that's really where dashboards come in.

And one step beyond dashboards is a generative UI tool.

You hear about this in the traditional, uh, vendors.

Juniper missed outs this quite heavily.

Ultimately, before I got into networking, there was CLI,

I don't know, CLII know dashboards very well, though.

Dashboards were the thing that simplified a lot

of the syntax, the knowledge base, the code work that had

to be done to speak with

and be intimate with a piece of hardware.

Dashboards replace that in, in a, in a lot of ways,

not entirely, but in a lot of ways, the new wave

of generative UI should give you the ability to speak

to a piece of technology, type it out in natural language,

misspell a word because you're in a hurry,

but still take the same action, have the same level

of granularity and the same type of performance

as you would within a dashboard.

So instead of how many on the call may

or may not know how to find their license expiration date,

how many on the call may

or may not have visibility into their ISP traffic

and what the up times are, instead of having to remember

where those things are in dashboards,

your solutions provider should be simplifying them.

They should be building an architecture from the ground up

that is vertically integrated,

that has the security posture required,

but can provide an ease of management that is, um,

in everyone's benefit.

So I've done a bit of talking, I'm gonna pause here, Tom.

Uh, if, if you can join me, come off mute for a second here.

I wanna understand from your angle, uh,

as a managed service provider with customers that did come

to you for your level of expertise,

networking is one part of the equation.

Where do you see a lot of your, um, your partners

and your customers coming in

and saying, Hey, we, we might have this problem,

but this is a more burning issue.

What are those burning issues that your customers run into

that they seek you out for?

You mean like outside of networking?

Outside of networking.

Oh, uh, so independent schools are our entire client base.

I think the biggest one that customers come to us

for is guidance and standards on device management

and all the devices that connect.

How do you secure them?

How do you, uh, update their software, their,

their firmware, their application base, uh,

what happens when they're off campus?

How do you provide filtering those kinds of things.

So device management as a whole ball of wax,

that is often confusing and time consuming,

and it can be labor intensive

and really requires sort of expertise in, in setup.

So it doesn't, it doesn't chain you

to some poorly implemented solution

or process set down the road.

We also see schools coming to us

for cybersecurity assessments

and then helping them to determine, well, what's the plan

for, for remediating what the assessment has has uncovered?

What are the things that we need to freak out about

because we haven't, you know, we haven't covered it in,

in our, in our security plan.

What should our security plan be?

What should our response plan be?

So cybersecurity is another area.

I guess in the, I guess the third area is probably in

helping them to create technology plans.

Like given all of the scope responsibilities from, you know,

networking and device management, security,

and now even, you know, understanding what to do

with the data that their SISs are generating.

What should their technology plan be?

You know, they have a lot of ambitions

and they know they may be in need of greater alignment

with the instructional product

that the school is delivering,

or greater alignment with the mission.

So technology is actually enabling mission

and enabling effective, uh, teaching and, and learning.

Uh, but what's, what's the plan to roll it out?

They're, they rarely have the budget

to do everything they need at once.

So they need, they need assistance

and prioritization of all of the initiatives that they know

that they have to, to act on.

Yeah.

The two, the three things that we talk

that you talked about were device management, security and,

and a broader technology plan.

The things that I read in

between those lines were budget and time.

Well, I, that budget underlines all of those things.

Um, particularly in technology strategy,

when we're creating a strategic plan

for a school budget is the thing

that determines how long is that plan.

Like, you don't have the money to do everything all at once.

So how do you parse all of the initiatives on a timeline

that makes sense from a budgetary standpoint?

That's a challenge. Uh, I mean,

it budget is the often the second set of questions

that we have when engaging

with a client on solving any of the problems.

You know, what, how quickly do you wanna solve this?

Um, how does it sit in terms of priority with the other, uh,

the other financial demands that, uh,

that are placed on you?

Well, and I think, you know, if we go back to the title,

if we go to the title of, of future proofing

and the infrastructure, the environment, if we're hung up

and, and rightfully so, if we're hung up on

that budgetary cycle, if we're hung up on, on the funds

that are available in, in a capital sense,

you probably can't plan all that long out

because you're only doing what you know is in the bucket.

Yeah, you'll always plan a long time out.

The plan should be, you know, 2, 3, 5 year plan,

but you have to revisit it every year

because priorities change.

You, you know, you, you know, let's say, let's take the case

of access points, for example.

You know, access points probably should never be

more than five years old.

That's typically like two wifi standards old,

and it should probably stay, you know,

within that timeframe.

So if you buy, considering not the NAS model,

but a standard model, if you buy

a hundred access points in 2021, you're making a mistake.

If you don't plan to re, if you don't have a budget item

for 2026 to replace those, those same 100 access points,

putting a $0 on it means you're gonna surprise somebody

with a request in 2026.

And it's probably gonna be the CFO

and it's probably going to be an awkward conversation

because that's something that you should plan.

So we need to add device management, security technology,

planning, and accounting to the, to the list of, of things

that, that we need to advise on. Got it. Um,

Budget's Big Max. So

Budget is big. Budget

is big. Talk to me.

Um, I guess it, it's a two part question.

Talk to me for a second on what, when you get approached by,

by a potential a prospect, the customer comes to you

and says, Hey, we need to make a change.

What, what does that environment tend to look like?

Is it, is it hodgepodge? Is it different levels of aging?

Give us an average. And the second part of that question is,

how much do you emphasize lifecycle management in those

conversations when they're not yet your customer?

Uh, okay. Well, so first, um,

uh, the, this, the environment is gonna be,

is gonna be a mix.

Uh, I guess the worst case,

I know you said hit an average here,

but the worst case is gonna be, you know, cabling that is

excessively old wiring closets that have, you know,

loose punch downs or, you know, cat five patch panels.

And, you know, you can't really, as

to your earliest point here, you can't really put in,

you know, modern networking components if the infrastructure

is cat five, because they're severely limited

at speeds over, you know, a hundred megabits.

So, you know, we want to get gigabit

or multi gigabit connections, which means, you know,

cat six, CAT 60, maybe even Cat seven cabling a patch panel.

So the whole kind of wiring plant could be a disaster.

And, you know, we go, we work in many schools

that are in very old buildings,

and sometimes the buildings are over a hundred years old

and, you know, there's no cabling pathways in that.

Um, so that's often the first very, uh,

uncomfortable conversation when a school really just wants

better wifi coverage in the classrooms

because, you know, they're really looking at it

from a service standpoint.

They need to deliver a wifi service

that works to the classrooms.

And, you know, they get, getting the cabling plant up to up

to date or up to spec is not typically the most pleasant

conversation at the beginning, but it is a necessary one.

So, uh, we also see, um, kind of substandard

products in, in the, in school independent schools.

Like they were forced to buy prosumer.

You know, we have some schools that actually went

to Best Buy and bought, you know, the bought access points,

uh, or, you know, those junkie Netgear,

little NETGEAR switches that, you know, you'd put in your,

you know, mother's home, you know, maybe, uh, if,

if she needed to switch.

Um, and so sometimes they try to operate schools with

that really inferior and error prone hardware

and don't really understand why that doesn't work.

Um, or they may have a brand of access points that is,

you know, they say they're cloud managed,

but the cloud management is pretty weak.

You know, we, um,

and so that, that represents a challenge,

particularly when it crosses vendor boundaries, um,

because, you know, it really blinds the operator

of the network from being able to trace a packet

of information from the user device

all the way out through the firewall.

And they should be able to do that and, and back, of course.

Uh, and they should be able to do that.

And when you're crossing vendor boundaries, well,

you've just severed that tie, so you can make hypotheses as

to where a particular user's problem may be,

but you can't really prove it, um, in a, you know,

in a, in a quick way.

So those are challenges

that we see when we start schools in

terms of infrastructure.

And, um, you know, I, you asked about lifecycle management,

and I could tell you that, um, you know,

because we have standards that we suggest to schools for,

for lifecycle, and I told you one of 'em, which is,

you know, don't let access points be

more than five years old.

Okay? If it's six that for a budgetary issue

that year, that's fine.

But beyond that, you're really impeding network performance.

You know, switches, they may be less urgent

to replace on that lifecycle.

Maybe that's more like 10 years, but it's not

because the switch is bad.

It could be because the vendor doesn't support it anymore.

There are no more form firmware updates,

but most commonly it's because they need a feature update.

And there are two kinds of feature updates.

It's port speed and port power.

And that's why we typically suggest hardware be updated

because there are new devices coming out all the time

and new standards, uh, for power consumption

that the switches better be able to handle.

And that can be very expensive, uh,

if left unplanned uncorrectly planned.

So you brought up couple things. So I think very important.

Yeah, you, you, you brought up a couple things,

but I think one of the more interesting ones,

and I, I didn't write it down in a direct quote,

but you said something to the effect of the technology

directors think of providing like internet

as a service to the classroom,

Their service provider. What a

Novel, right?

What a novel idea to work with a manufacturer

that is also delivering a service.

It'd be very nice to have those services paired that the,

uh, the IT director should be able to come to you

or come to a vendor and say, you know, I need to deliver,

you know, 50 megabit performance to 200 devices

or support testing in an auditorium of 500 students.

Um, that's the service I have to provide now, uh,

network partner or MSP partner, how are you going

to help me to be able to do that?

Where is our partnership going to make sure that, that

that link is solid

and I'm going to be able to confidently tell the educators,

yes, you'll have the service

that you need in that environment.

Yeah. So I, I, I wanna bring us back to this slide

because you, you talked about a couple things.

Um, cat five, cat six, cat seven, the, the,

the speeds, the degradation of the speeds.

You're talking a hundred megs versus a gig

versus multi gig speed.

So it doesn't matter what you're stringing up in terms

of your hardware, it, it almost matters more the level of,

of speed that can come into that box

to propagate into a classroom.

You also talked about, um, vertical integration

and removing those vendor boundaries and,

and providing a, a stack, uh, if, if I can, a stack that,

um, eliminates the finger pointing.

We've all seen the, uh, the Spider-Man meme

where all the Spider-Man are pointing at each other.

You don't really want that from your technology providers.

Um, the last thing was around the lifecycle management,

which we'll get to, but operational support,

I think this is something that, that NASA can

and should do much better, um, than,

than a traditional hardware vendor.

Um, you should have bespoke networks built out

in, in, in the environment.

You should have an AP per classroom.

You should have an environment

that is provisioned for today.

But Tom, to your point,

what happens if I move my graduations from my gym onto

an outdoor courtyard?

Oh, buddy, there is new outdoor

access points that I gotta pay for.

There might be a new switch that I need to have,

or there's a lot of new cabling I need to run that future

planning isn't necessarily something you know about when

you're making a technology purchase.

You talked about, uh, port speeds and port power.

Again, some of these MULTISENSOR cameras nowadays are

requiring V OE plus plus.

Are you, are you slamming a bunch of injectors?

Are you, are you over consuming the power draw?

How is that impacting the other devices on those switches?

I think the, the vertical integration piece and,

and the service piece really lend

to the operational support, but it is beyond just the boxes.

It, it, it, it is the cabling infrastructure.

And the thing that,

that I heard you talk about was budget, budget, budget.

That, that, that's, Hey, how are you,

what's the first thing you want to tackle?

Have you thought about the cost there?

The world where a user, a, a, an IT director, a school

doesn't have to ba well, it's not

that it's technology is not free,

but they don't have to balance it in the same way

that they did before in terms of a huge capital hit,

unknown capital expenses along the way, buying something

that's prosumer because they don't have the funding,

or they didn't make the accounting goal of 2026.

I need to refresh those aps, right? Yeah. Right.

Or you're new and you don't know what your predecessor did,

and you don't know where boxes are in your environment.

Um, so Tom, thank you for those bits and pieces.

Yeah, Ryan, I, I, I want to come over to you for,

for a quick minute here on this operational side.

Um, if you can talk to us about,

talk to us about the, the considerations that you made, uh,

not just on the hardware side and, and the service side,

but around the operational bits and pieces.

Um, you, you had a, a bit of a tighter timeline

to install before the school year.

Uh, give us a sense of what

that looked like from your perspective.

Yeah, sure. Uh, we were, you know, I was,

I was up against licensing ending, um,

from my, my previous network.

Um, and when that licensing was gonna end, it was,

it was gonna shut down the whole network.

So I had some, some choices to make at that point of

do I just relicense, um, and stay with the same hardware.

Uh, my firewalls were 10 years old,

so they definitely needed to be replaced.

Uh, access points were going on five or six years.

Um, and I knew those would be coming up,

switches I wasn't quite as concerned about.

Um, but I did know over the next say, five years,

that's gonna be something that

I would be, I'd be looking at too.

'cause they were, you know, seven or eight years,

um, a piece.

Um, so it, taking a look at

and trying to make those decisions of do I want

to continue number one with this vendor?

Um, and part of that was the licensing was, was,

was becoming more and more expensive.

Um, and, you know, even if I were to just relicense

and maybe get new firewalls from a different vendor,

then I'm, then I'm looking at, you know, this, this mismatch

of, of vendors, uh, that Tom talked about.

Um, and how do I phase that in, you know,

over the next few years?

Um, and, and, and,

and then, you know, if you wanna talk budget, um,

taking a look at just the licensing

and new firewalls for year one, um, was gonna be in the tens

of thousands, um, because I've got two campuses.

So it, it, it was, it was one of those things

where I was going to the, to our business department saying,

you know, I'm gonna need this much money, um, this year,

and I'll probably need that much money again, uh, in the,

in the next two to three years.

So each year.

Yeah. So you, you, you were, I mean, you were, uh,

a perfect example of lifecycle management, right?

You had five to six years on those aps,

firewalls were gonna be bricks,

switches not so concerned about.

So to your point, and what Tom was talking about, you had

to really have that accounting plan down.

How much did that, how much did your, um,

your future planning help you in this decision

to future proof?

Yeah. No, I mean, it definitely helped just knowing,

knowing my cost for the next five years of my, you know,

current situation, right?

Um, and that's, that's thinking about, um,

replacing just the same number of access points,

just the same, you know, number of switches, switch, ports,

not even taking into consideration.

Yeah, we're gonna have a,

a camera upgrade in the next couple years.

We're gonna have, um, access control

that's gonna be coming up.

Um, it, knowing

that tho those numbers over the next five years really

helped me to say, when I came to you, max has said,

you know, this is my square

footage, this is what I'm looking at.

And seeing that your numbers were the same

or even much better actually, um, to be,

and then you, you adding, you know, um,

over provisioning, right?

So prior to this,

I didn't have access points in every classroom.

Now I do, um, I had CAT five main, mostly CAT five E,

um, in most places.

But you said you're gonna come in and,

and do CAT six, right?

And that, and that, you know, kind of was like, oh,

those aren't those, those weren't even costs

that I was even considering.

So, um, that's what made it more compelling.

Yeah. Thank you for saying thank you

for being honest and giving us that piece.

But thank you for saying The last thing is,

that wasn't even a cost I was considering, right?

I think a lot of times you, you know, you might know you're,

you're counting beans and you might know, okay,

I know I know my boxes

and I know to your point, I know I have this camera upgrade.

I've got this access control system I need to install,

and I'm, I'm lining those things out.

But you may, you may not be thinking about the cost

of cabling or even the impact that cabling might have.

Um, last one on, on, on this piece.

Give me a sense, i, i, if you can, uh, a lot

of times network as a service is thought of as a black box.

It's the Wizard of Oz where I say, stay on the other side

of the curtain, gimme the keys

to your car, don't worry about it.

Uh, what has your experience been when, when you think

of network as a service and,

and the control versus shared responsibility that you have?

Right. So I came, I came, you know, I came from a, a,

an infrastructure that, you know, had a,

a nice cloud dashboard, um, was able to get into that.

Um, I also had, um, MS MSP services on top of that.

So, you know, anytime I needed an issue

or at anytime I had anything, I could look at it

and see what I needed to do,

and I could call up on my MSP

from what I'm seeing right now.

And, and, you know, I've, I have gone with meter,

um, and thank you so much.

Um, it's, it's basically the same.

Um, you know, I can get in there

and I can see, I can see everything I need to see, um,

and when, and if I have an issue, uh, I can either deal

with it myself or if I'm not confident, which, you know,

coming from the classroom, I was, I was not trained

as a technology person.

Um, I always need that kind of, that, that second, I,

I'm always second guessing

myself, am I doing the right thing?

Um, and it's, and it's easy enough to open a ticket and,

and, you know, kind of walk through it with someone and,

and, uh, go from there.

So that's, that's given me the confidence to, to, you know,

be able to take on some of the, some

of the things I need to take on.

Well, the, the, the confidence is a big,

that's why Tyler's here for me.

Uh, I know the technology, but Tyler's my guy.

Um, so that's why every, everyone needs a little bit

of confidence in that friendly friend next to them.

So the last thing that I, I, I think we, we kind

of heard throughout the conversation is

lifecycle management.

It's, it's the over provisioning.

It is, um, the goal of having a fixed,

predictable cost that is not going to have

huge capital hits every two, three years.

Um, not having to deal with licensing costs where none

of us know what those are gonna be in the future.

Um, it brings me to this slide here.

So delivering value should be predictable.

Those two things don't have to be exclusive to each other.

Um, we, we heard AP per classroom, I think

that should be a default in, in a lot of senses.

That should not be an aspirational goal.

That should almost be an expectation.

I think with network as a service providers,

you tend to see it, it's a service.

It's a service. So there has to be a level of accountability

that you are putting into the organization, whoever it's,

that you go with, and they're providing that service.

And, and if they don't provision your environment correctly,

if they're working off of minimum viable, uh, build

of materials, that's not gonna lead to the right service.

If you think about lifecycle management,

and you think about the fact that in,

in a traditional world, you're having to buy

that extra switch.

When you get that new camera system,

potentially you're having to buy an a, a new switch,

because you might need those p oe plus plus ports.

You're having to bring in additional, by default,

your environment should have high availability

by default there.

There's not a world where you should only have

one security appliance

that's controlling the entire network.

If that thing goes brick for, for a power surge

or any reason the entirety of the network is compromised,

that should not be the default.

There should be safeguards

that a provider is putting in place for you

and that lifecycle management.

To Tom's point, I mean, wifi seven is, is here in some cases

and coming in in a lot of cases

that you can make the argument that you, you may not have

to be on the train the year it comes out,

but if you just bought APS last year, year

before that, that future proofing is just not there,

that's another capital hit that you're gonna have

to go ask a business officer for.

So ultimately, it is the over provisioning component.

It is the lifecycle management component.

And that should lead to a singular fixed cost

that is highly competitive to,

or more affordable than a traditional environment

where you are having the ongoing support of the people

that built the hardware, the people

that are managing the hardware, the people

that are responsible for delivering that service.

So we, we, we've had a great dialogue thank you

to, to Tom and Ryan.

Uh, we, we've gone through some slides.

Uh, I think there is, uh, the,

the community here may be eager to see some

of the technology in practice.

So I promise we will have a couple of minutes at the end.

We're actually trending nicely for some q and a.

Uh, but I'm gonna unshare my screen

and I'm gonna bring my partner on Tyler Crowley.

Um, Tyler, if you would like to come off of mute, I am going

to stop sharing, and I will let you take the screen here.

Excellent. All right. Let me go ahead and share my screen.

Love the, uh, love the dialogue.

I get to, uh, I could do, do the fun part of,

uh, demoing the product.

So excited to show you, uh, our meter dashboard as well

as our meter command, uh,

which is our generative UI product.

Uh, we'll talk a little bit about what

that means in, in just a moment.

But, um, if I can draw your attention to my screen.

Uh, right now we're looking at, uh, an example

of a a meter dashboard, uh, with our full stack.

If you, if I draw your attention on the left hand side,

so we can see all of our hardware in this single pane

of glass from our access points to our switches,

to our security appliances, and even our pdu.

Right now we're looking at our network's insights page.

This will give you a quick snapshot

of device status connected clients

and the health of ISP quality.

So right here we can see, uh,

our security appliances are online,

our switches looks like we have an access point, uh,

offline in this environment.

So we'd be able to quickly drill down into that access point

to determine, um, what's going on with that device.

You can see here it's been offline since June 7th.

Uh, so it looks like might have been planned

or we've known about it for quite some time.

We do proactive notifications as well.

So you don't need to just log into your dashboard

to figure out, uh, the health of your devices

and the health of your network under this

network's insights page.

Um, we can also adjust, uh, the duration of time as a filter

so we can take a look at, uh, what is the health

or what is the, um, what is the health of my network

over the last hour, six days to 30 days, everything in

between, as well as the amount of connect to clients.

And as mentioned before, uh, the wham quality.

So having this all in a single pane

of glass is very, very nice.

So we can start at our ISP

and really understand, uh, the performance of our network.

We can also work proactively, uh, with our ISP uh,

providers, uh, to ensure that in the event of, uh,

an issue happening, let's say even

with your secondary circuit, we can work to resolve it

before it even becomes an issue.

So this is great from an ISP uh, perspective,

but, um, there's a couple different ways we can approach.

Uh, let's say a troubleshooting scenario.

Someone reports an issue, um, they say,

I can't access the internet.

Um, I think we've probably all been in a, a situation where

might not actually be the internet.

It might not be the wifi, could be, uh, end device

or, uh, as we like to say, user error.

Um, but as an example, let's take a look at, um, uh,

the health of a client in particular.

So someone reports an issue,

I can quickly search based on host name.

I could drill down into this device

and understand what is the performance, what is the health

of this client, how are they using the network

and all the information that I need to really understand,

uh, the performance of this device.

So we can see here, um, it looks like, uh, John, who we're,

um, who we're taking a look at today, it looks like his, uh,

device is showing that it's healthy.

So what we're doing here is we're aggregating, um,

a few different data points, a few different stats, uh,

for the last 30 minutes.

And we're taking a look at things like signal

to noise ratio, the usage and the data rates,

and a few other items.

But what's nice here is we can see

how this client is actually using the network.

So we can see the usage,

what's going on in the wireless environment, what sort

of speeds that we should expect, as well

as what's happening in the RF environment.

Things like channel utilization.

We can see exactly how it's connected onto the network.

You have all your information such as post name,

MAC address, IP address.

We can see exactly how it's connected into the network.

So very quickly, John could say, I'm having issues.

I could jump in, I can see is it healthy or not,

and how is it physically connected

and logically going through my network.

So from the access point

to which network it's actually connected to,

how long it's been connected,

and if there's been any sort of events

with this particular client, let's say it's moving around,

maybe it was, uh, roaming between access points.

We can see different information like the DHCP process,

was it able to get an IP address?

And what what's nice here is just being able to go

to the single source of truth from the ISP down

to the individual client.

But let's maybe trace this, uh, client.

So let's take a look at the access

point that it's connected to.

I can also see the health and a bit more information on the

performance of my wireless network

and specifically this particular wireless access point.

So again, we have some different health metrics here.

So we can see, uh, the overall health performance,

connectivity, RF and system.

I can even break this down by SSID

or specific band or frequency.

And I can take a look at, at it over time.

So we can even go back within the last 30 days.

Uh, so we have a really great baseline of the performance

of this wireless environment.

I can see things like the total amount

of co clients connected over time, what the usage was.

Again, data rates and things like channel utilization.

So in this example, it looks like 2.4 is high.

Probably see that as a recurring theme,

especially in the classrooms.

So we would be able to create things like five gigahertz

only SSIDs or encourage those clients to connect

to a spectrum, um, that will be more highly performing.

Things like channel width

and what frequency it's communicating on

and the transmit power.

Now we're getting a little bit into the weeds.

All of that, uh, is configurable.

Uh, obviously, you know, working with the meter team

or your preferred partner, we would be able

to fine tune your network.

So it's always highly performing.

We also have things like the ability

to change the frequency in which it's communicating on.

If we notice that the channel utilization is too high,

which is going to cause, uh, a degradation and performance,

and overall, uh,

a less than ideal experience in the classroom, we'd be able

to work with you proactively.

And we have some different mechanisms in place.

So you always have a highly performant network.

In this example, I can see

this particular client connected to the access point.

Well, I wanna see what other clients are connected to

that access point as well.

And what's nice here is just in a click,

I can actually see other devices connected.

And what is the wireless health of those clients

all in this single pane of glass.

Now, let's say, for example, looks like everything's good.

So we've, we've validated from a wireless perspective, um,

John's client should be, be performing, um, uh, great,

it looks like it's healthy, the access point

that they're connected to also looks healthy.

But let's keep tracing the wire.

So I want to take a look at the switch

that this access point is connected to.

And what I noticed that looked like it

was connected to port three.

I'd like to see all the traffic that's actually going, uh,

ingress and egress through the port.

How's this port actually being used?

What types of traffic are going across it?

And again, this is really nice

because I have a good baseline.

I have this data where, let's say I, the last 24 hours, um,

it looks like there's some anomaly

'cause I'm able to go back the last seven

days or last 30 days.

So I always have that good baseline knowledge and I know,

and I, I know what to expect, um, in my network.

I can see things like, uh, if there's any sort

of errors in the interface, what types

of traffic broadcast, multicast.

I can even do, uh, different cable.

I can do a remote cable test, which is nice.

So you can test out, uh, the cable cable pairs

for all your ethernet cables remotely.

I also have the ability to have a nice visual, uh,

port diagram where I can see what devices are connected,

which ones are using POE,

what is the actual power consumption,

what are my AP active uplinks?

And let's say for example, I need to, uh,

move a device over to a different port.

Let's say it's a printer

or maybe, uh, we're working on a security camera install.

I need to stage a couple ports.

I can do a bulk configuration change,

select my vlan, hit save.

And I'm on my way now from the wireless client,

uh, to the access point, to the switch

to the security clients.

I have complete visibility end to end.

So there's never any question, um, uh, the path

that advice is taking to get out to the internet.

And a worst case scenario where I need to troubleshoot,

I understand and have complete visibility

end to end in my network.

So here we can take a look at, um, our ISP availability.

We do support SD wam.

So we do have, uh, multi wam ability,

so you can have redundancy in your network.

We also do policy-based routing.

Um, so we do have the ability to control different types

of protocols and IP addresses

and particular types of traffic.

And we can choose, um,

to have certain traffic go at our primary.

Maybe we have our guest network set up

and we want them to go off the secondary circuit.

We can configure that all here in our meter dashboard.

And we also have a nice, uh, visual diagram of

what ports are in use.

And the idea here is to make it very simple, easy,

intuitive, reliable,

and secure in the most highly performant network.

Let's say for example, you needed to, uh, configure an SSID.

You can do that, uh, from the dashboard here.

So I can say add an SSID,

let you do, let's say test SSID and one toggle.

We can make it a guest, S-S-S-I-D, uh, which will, uh,

enable the client isolation.

You don't want these, uh, guest devices

to communicate with anything else.

The nice part here is we also have a zero trust approach.

So no VLANs will be able to communicate

with other VLANs by default.

We want to approach things from a security perspective

with the principle of lease privilege.

Only people who need to have access will have access.

And that's how we can always make sure

that our network is secure.

Let's say for example, I create this SS id,

I can bind it to a vlan.

Let's say I know that 2.4, uh, is very saturated.

We just have too many client devices.

I can just disable the 2.4 radio and only have five.

And let's say I wanted to make sure I had security enabled

so I could do something like WPA two with A-P-P-S-K,

just kind of like your

standard password that you would see at home.

We also have the ability to, uh, integrate with Radius.

So we have a couple profiles that are already set up here.

And we also support the ability of one

of the newer standards as we're seeing a lot more client

devices actually support this.

Uh, we do have the ability to support WPA A

three, let's say.

Not all devices are ready for WPA A three.

We do have a transition mode, which will operate WPA two

and WPA A three, and we also have an enterprise version.

And then of course, any sort of management frame protection,

which is an additional security feature available.

One thing I wanted to touch on, oh yes.

With, sorry, with, with about, you know, let's,

let's call it five minutes left.

Uh, I want to make sure that we can show maybe one

or two more things and then pivot over to connect just

to give the, the, the audience, uh,

a hint at what's gonna be released in five days.

Absolutely. Well, I'll touch on DNS security

'cause I do think this is, uh, very important.

Um, we do have the ability to, uh,

implement security DNS security specifically based on

categories, applications, and domains.

Um, draw your attention to just a few

that we have pre-configured.

So, uh, on our guest vlan, uh,

and just one click, we have the ability to, let's say

for example, you want to block any sort of adult content,

um, or block any sort of security threats, uh,

on the malware side.

And we also have the ability to

dynamically map up your network.

So you always have an UpToDate, uh, network diagram, uh,

just using LDP.

So I know I'm under, uh, time constraints.

So, uh, I want to talk very briefly,

maybe in three minutes we'll see how much I can get through

of our meter command.

This is our generative UI product

that we believe is combining the best of both worlds

of CLI and dashboard.

Um, all using natural language.

What command allows us to do is quickly get the information

that we need, take action,

and we can even build custom dashboards in real time.

As an example, I typed out a command.

When was ISP reliability lost under 95%.

I want to see just in general, have I had any sort

of issues with my wan?

I can type that in natural language.

What it's doing is making API calls on the backend,

pulling in that information so I can quickly, uh, understand

did was my, uh, WAN having issues?

If yes, um, great, now we can deep dive into that,

uh, work to resolve it.

Let's say I'm not seeing any issues.

I can type in something like, uh,

what is the health of this client?

And let's say John was reporting issues.

Instead of logging into dashboard, clicking around,

searching for a client, I can just type this in

and it's gonna be able to pull in information

to tell me about the health of this client, as well

as a summary of how we got to that conclusion.

We can also do something like show me a port diagram

and, um, we can select a switch

and this will give me a visual representation

to help me understand what devices are actually connected,

uh, to the ports as well

as available ports that are on the switch.

This is really helpful for any sort of remote, uh,

type of troubleshooting.

So we can see we have this nice visual diagram.

I can even take it a step further

and make a configuration change.

I can say something like, configure VLAN seven name

security, uh, cameras and give it an IP address.

What this will do is it'll present a form,

it'll autofill out this information.

I can hit, uh, submit

and just through natural language, I'm able to configure,

um, my VLANs uh, across all of my switches.

You could see that it AutoFi out some information here.

Let's say I want to have a specific, uh, default gateway.

I can type that in. I can go to the bottom, hit submit

and it'll leave and tell me exactly

what this change, uh, is doing.

All of this is role-based access control.

So we can choose who has the ability to, um, make changes

or just have that visibility.

The last one I'll end on is I can say something like,

create a dashboard for my CTO.

What this is doing is actually, um,

writing the software in real time,

creating custom dashboards, uh, to help you get started.

So let's say, um, for example, uh,

someone might want to understand the throughput, the health

of a client report di diagram.

All this is written in real time,

and I can drag this over into my canvas

and I can rearrange this, I can resize it, um,

and I can share this link out to the people that need

to have visibility into it.

And this is really great as a collaboration tool, um,

for let's say troubleshooting in real time, uh,

having the visibility, uh, into your network

and be able to make, uh, any sort of, uh,

configuration changes all in natural language.

So I know I went through that very quickly.

Uh, so hopefully I did an okay job there next.

Wonderful. No, wonderful. I appreciate it.

And, and Ryan, we, we alluded to the fact that this is going

to be live, uh, November 5th, or excuse me, November 12th.

So five more days. How could you imagine using the command

function in, in a day-to-day exercise?

Yeah. Uh, no.

I mean, something came up a couple weeks ago

where I had a classroom full of, of, of laptops network was,

they were, they were saying the network

is slow, the network is slow.

And I'm thinking, oh God, I just put this in.

What, what's going on here?

And that would've definitely been a, a place

where I could've just typed in there like,

tell me about the network health

of this particular room or this space.

Um, it did work out though that I was able

to actually just dial, dial into the, um, the aps

and I noticed that each of the clients was downloading six

or seven gigs of, of data as soon

as they turned on their laptop.

So that's, that was more of a, a user,

you were user experience thing happening

rather than a network thing.

So, um, it did, it did work out,

but I'm, I'm excited for command,

Hopefully just gives you a, a different way

to take similar action.

Um, there was a question and,

and you know, Ryan, I, I, the, I'll, I'll read it out.

Uh, the question was around, um, security.

Uh, so as we look at the theme of future proofing,

can you talk more about secure

network security in that vein?

Um, from our stance,

we heard Tyler talk about role-based access

control being our default.

We run a zero trust model.

We've got all of your VPNs,

we leverage a wire guard framework.

We're building redundancy into simple security appliances.

So from our end, we are doing what we can to ensure that,

that everything that we're putting in is good today

and will be better tomorrow.

What are you thinking about though, Ryan, in terms of

your security posture and,

and, uh, what that looks like today

and what that will look like tomorrow?

And Tom, I'll come to you with the same thought.

We talked a little bit about it at the beginning,

but how are you providing that to your, your customer base?

Yeah, so, um, last year I went through the,

through Atlas the, the nine, um, security Academy.

And, and it was great. It was really gave me some things

to think about and, and look through, um,

and really great checklists.

Um, you know, and during our implementation implementation

of of Meter, um, I was able to to, you know, kind of start

to take a look at those and say, Hey,

what are the best practices?

You know, basically I've got this network

that's 10 years old, um, where are we now based on,

you know, the technology that's out there.

Um, and you know, during the implementation, talking

with the engineers and talking with, with Umax, just going,

going through, Hey, is this the right way to do it?

Um, and, and having you be more proactive

and saying actually that VAN shouldn't be like that

or that shouldn't be configured that way, um, was a,

was a really good start.

Um, and now I'm able to dig back into those checklists

and say, okay, let's, let's, uh, let's really dial it in.

Awesome. Thank you.

Uh, Tom, same, same, you know,

template of a question over to you.

Yeah, I I think that the themes have been hit,

uh, for the most part.

Uh, the idea of implementing zero trust.

I mean, it's not, it's not novel

and it shouldn't be considered as, you know,

something you're weighing, you know, I think it,

it should just be done.

Um, and the idea of severely limited

or no access until it's proved that you need to have access

or that you're in a role that requires that kind

of access is another part of the security posture,

given the context here of, of networking.

Um, but then in, in the demonstration, uh,

Tyler talked about, you know, v lance up

and the idea of segmentation

and, you know, deliberate isolation of networks.

Those are really good standards, um, from, uh,

from any network configuration standpoint,

but also goes with, uh, is paired

with like packet prioritization

and, you know, making sure that, you know, voice

and video are set up in a way

that's support what the schools need.

But, um, you know, back to VLANs, it's, it's sometimes hard

for, for it

or let's say technology directors to understand that

and then to implement across all devices can be, you know,

it can be time consuming, it can be error prone,

particularly if you're doing CLI kind of configuration.

So a device, you know, a tool like the one

that we saw demonstrated, uh, is very, very effective at,

uh, ensuring that, um, you don't have to consider all

of the security standards

before you implement something like a new VAN.

It's presumed that you want these to be secured

and I, I like what I saw.

Thank you. Uh, we are at the top.

Um, I want to be respectful as, as, uh, many of us,

all of us have day jobs.

Um, Kelsey, I did see the other question.

I will, I will shoot you a response on that and,

and hopefully we'll get, um, Ryan and Tom to weigh in.

I wanna say thank you to, to the entire audience.

Um, it it, it's been a privilege to, to share the stage

with Tom and Ryan and Tyler.

Um, we're gracious to the Atlas community, um,

and ultimately we're hoping that at a minimum network

as a service in general became a little bit less scary

and a little bit more forward thinking for the audience.

Um, if, if nothing else, that,

that's what we hope to accomplish.

So, um, thank you for the time.

Please get in touch and,

and, uh, I think Kelsey, this will be uploaded. Yeah.

Yes, yes. We'll send the recording out, um, soon, uh,

with, uh, answers to questions that,

um, didn't get answered.

And on behalf of Atlas, we wanna thank you Max.

We wanna thank all of our presenters.

We wanna thank Meter for your support.

Um, you can find, you can meet some of the meter team, um,

in Atlanta, 2025 at our annual conference.

They will be there. Um,

and they're also doing some other involvement throughout the

year, so stay tuned.

Um, but thank you again and um, have a great day everyone.

Have a great one. Thanks team. Thanks so much. Bye.