 Tom here from Lawrence Systems. I did a video on January 23rd, 2021 on the Unify Cloud Key Gen2 and the firmware changes that were made that now make this device well require a cloud account to get set up so you have to have internet access and remove the option for multi-site management. Now this is something that causes a lot of speculation, properly a lot of anger because if you buy a device and that device gets an update then that update removes features that you previously had. I understand the absolute aggravation that would cause and rightfully so. But what I want to be very clear is even though they both run Unify Software Defined Networking Controller 6.043 which is a free download and you can self-host, the self-hosted version allows for multi-site management and does not require a cloud registration account. So it is only when you purchase a Unify Cloud Key that that is where the problem occurs. That's why I was specific in that video to say it's the firmware update to the cloud key causing it not the Unify Software Defined Networking Controller software. That being said, I want to talk about the people who think that you should just switch and asking me about Unify alternatives. And I want to go back to the year 2013 to give a little bit of history of how we found Unify. Now going back this far also has to be on the way back when machine because maybe you remember or maybe you don't depending on how long you've worked in the tech business or how many products you looked at was a open mesh company and they had cloud tracks, the free cloud based network controller software that helps you build, manage and monitor your wireless network from anywhere in the world. And cloud tracks was pretty cool but I right away realized when we bought some cloud tracks devices and some Unify devices by the way that there was going to be a problem with a controller tied to company given away for free. They have to keep funding the cloud and if something happens then we suddenly lose access and the ability to manage all of our devices. So at the same time I'd also bought these and I holding it up because you probably see how the logo looks on here. This is probably one of the first ones I bought and these were great and they worked quite well and offered a self-hosted controller. And here we are eight years later almost and that still distinguishes Unify from the rest of the marketplace where they have a scalable onsite that you can host controller or host it in your own stack in your own private cloud however you want to set it up they are actually pretty flexible on that and allow the management of many many devices at many many sites each one of them distinct. This is just not something offered by a lot of other companies and I see a lot of people asking me about alternatives because and I get it it's speculation if they did this to the cloud key what's next the software controller? I hope not I'm very optimistic that they will not do this because I think they are aware of where their cash flow probably comes from. At least as far as I can tell the massive amount of the product sold I mean don't get me wrong consumers and so to speak like homelab and end users who buy a handful of these devices certainly make up a massive percentage of it but I also know IT people not just myself but other ones that we've consulted with and we work with with deployments that literally spend three or four hundred thousand constantly on their products like we're talking just massive buys of large scale deployments and the big reason for doing it is because they have a self-hosted controller. We've sold a lot of jobs to companies that have multiple sites many many deployed and they wanted a single dashboard and they were already burned by insert name of some other company because they don't like the way the cloud controller worked or they raised prices on it or the licensing fees or one case was the company was mad because they were discontinuing certain models and they're like oh we're you have to pay extra for support on older models was their answer for end of life and they're like the models work fine but you kind of get the idea they didn't like that being married to some controller that they had no say so in. Now obviously there is the challenge if Unify does make that change to controller what would happen well in the case of that company or even me we would keep the last version that did work and figure out a solution at that point in time. I think it's too early to say that that would happen because I think Unify as I stated has a strong awareness of where their products are going and who buys them at scale that being said the changing of it and looking at alternatives I think is still fair to do it's always good to keep a look at the other competition in the marketplace but then we have competing business models you have like Aruba and Sinan or a few other companies Maraki and they're cloud only there's no local management of this particular access point and I did review this Aruba and Sinan I've not reviewed the Maraki I think I did do maybe one or two videos kind of talking about it because they're probably one of the bigger ones in the market being that they're owned by Cisco and they do a lot of marketing but that being said they're cloud only as well so yeah if Maraki changes license or whatever you are completely beholden to their cloud you you are not if they gave you a 30-day notice you have 30 days to swap out infrastructure at however many sites you're managing does it likely they'll do that no but they may raise prices that definitely does happen from time to time and you were just beholden to that and etc etc not to get too off topic I will mention though TP Link Omata I have taken a brief look at it and I don't know that they're ready to compete at all in the Unify space they're a very beta feeling product it does look a lot like the Unify software it's even built on MongoDB I even had it crash on me setting up and have some problems which I haven't really sorted out but I will reach out to them and look at it because I want to look at it as an alternative but I don't realistically as optimistic as I am about many things I'm not as optimistic that TP Link is going to be able to build a scalable product that would be able to deploy the way you can over at Unify it just doesn't look like they're I don't know I don't have a lot of faith in them as there maybe I'm wrong I wouldn't mind being proven wrong on that and they end up making a great product not to digress the next one that comes up a lot is Ruckus now I've not done a review on Ruckus I believe Christian crosstalk has but Ruckus Unleashed is one of their models that doesn't require any licensing as I understand it right now here in January 2020 but it does have a lot of limitations itself there's a finite number of devices that you can adopt to the controller it doesn't support any of their switches and when I started looking at some of the other limitations it kind of feels like their deviations from their zone director their commercial paid licensed version of their software it's kind of like they give you the basics which for homies is probably perfectly fine people who only have a few of them I mean 25 is more than a lot of people put in their lab or in their house but when you start talking about the scalable systems well you either are going to buy one of the zone binder license I mean we have clients with 300 400 access points plus all the switching and uh so they this is not like a drop in fit at all for that not to mention you go back to licensing fees when you start doing it that scale so my overall I hope Unify doesn't keep making these changes and try to be more consumer focused I think it's kind of a split and they just don't see this as a device that we would host multiple sites on matter of fact it's probably a support nightmare forum because we certainly have helped move people off of cloud keys because they didn't read that little thing there it says hey there's a 50 device limit we find people trying to put more devices on here than they should we try and find people putting just in general trying to make this box do more than it can I mean it's a $200 box but it's not um it's not really that scalable and this is possibly why they did that I don't know I'm still speculating I really wish Unify would be clear and concise and have very clear public statements and roadmaps of we think the this is the small home device and we're going to leave alone the Unify software defined networking controller because we think that is the business use case and we're going to keep that doing perfectly fine with multi-site management and all the features that you're used to on there and we don't have any plans to change it so rest easy there IT and MSP people who have deployed thousands and thousands of product but unfortunately Unify doesn't make the most clear public statements I hope that changes this video is just who raised some awareness out there that I'm aware of some of these alternatives if you are aware though because I'll the people I've talked to do not seem to know of anyone if you are aware of a company that offers an onsite controller that scales like Unify that isn't tp link omata because that's the only one so far I've even looked at that I I see what they're doing trying to copy matter of fact very much copy what Unify is doing right down to a very similar user interface and user experience and matter of fact my understanding is you can't even do multiple IPs on the wan I mean they're really copy and Unify including the flaws not to digress if you're aware of one please let me know leave it in the comments below mention the name of a company out there I don't know that there's someone going to jump in and fill the void if Unify does change because every other company is kind of betting against Unify by having a cloud because that's how you maintain and control the ecosystem I actually like the fact that Unify is kind of fighting against that because all these companies and from a purely business non-technical standpoint if you want product lock in tie it to a cloud with no other option you then control the strings you control the revenue if you want more money turn that license number up a little bit you just dial it up a notch you have a meeting and you decide how much before our competitors would gain some of our customers and you're going okay well the competitor just raised their prices too and that's usually the queue all right do we need more competitors we need more of their customers or do we want to raise our prices too so we need a margin as well these are some of the problems that happen when every company is offering a cloud Unify's the one company fighting against it I don't think some of these free offerings would even exist by these other companies like Aruba and Sonan like I have right here if Unify didn't offer this because they kind of stand alone as I said in the beginning in the market for that let me know your thoughts below let me know if you know a company that does compete directly with Unify with a self-hosted onsite controller that scales and offers management at the way Unify does and thanks and thank you for making it to the end of the video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more content from the channel hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon if 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