Sesame Says WiFi Solution Open To Channel
Sesame is providing partners with training, demo equipment and back-end support. The company has also signed on WAV, an Aurora, Ill.-based wireless distributor that counts 28,000 solution providers among its partners.
Founded in February 2003, Sesame has a self-service wireless access solution called SesameSpot, which customers can use to set up hot spots in their offices to grant authenticated WLAN Internet access to visitors and guest users in common areas such as lobbies and conference rooms.
"There's an identity created and usage is logged, so over time if there's any impropriety, you [have the user's identity] to hand over to authorities," said Tom Hope, president and CEO of Sesame, Ottawa, Ontario.
The solution includes the Sesame Access Manager access control router and an automated provisioning service from Sesame that is sold as an annual subscription.
Guest users that want WLAN Internet access enter their cell-phone numbers as login IDs into a Web-based interface. The system automatically creates unique passwords and sends them back to the users' cell phones via Short Message Service (SMS), enabling them to log on.
Another benefit is that guest users can access the Internet on their own, without help from a customer's IT staff, said Alex Acimovic, director of business development at End to End Group, a solution provider in Markham, Ontario, that is targeting car dealerships, universities and hotels.
A SesameSpot starter kit, which supports 10 concurrent guest users, is priced at $2,500, including hardware and one year of service. Ongoing service subscriptions cost $1,200 annually.