7SIGNAL, The Wi-Fi Performance Company, announced today that it has closed a $7 million Series C financing round. The funding will support a variety of growth initiatives and platform enhancements that will further support 7SIGNAL's growing global customer base.
Investments in the company's SaaS-based Wi-Fi performance management platform will benefit 7SIGNAL's enterprise customers with thousands of employees and their devices in facilities all over the world. "The productivity of their people depends on the wide array of wireless devices working in harmony with Wi-Fi networks without interruption," stated Tom Barrett, president and CEO of 7SIGNAL. "Our platform already assures maximum uptime and is expanding to help organizations meet the growing number of Wi-Fi performance challenges that come with the Internet of Things. We give IT departments the tools they need to be successful, and they're excited to finally have a way to proactively support mission-critical Wi-Fi."
According to Cisco, 81% of organizations surveyed indicate that it costs up to $300,000 for every hour of network downtime, in addition to the productivity lost. 7SIGNAL's Wi-Fi performance management platform enables a proactive approach to making Wi-Fi dependable and efficient by providing continuous, real-time monitoring, alerting and recommendations for optimizing Wi-Fi networks. 7SIGNAL analytics provides unique insights into device performance, wireless LAN adapter, and software driver performance, in addition to identifying roaming aggressiveness versus stickiness, band preference, and interference caused by radio resource management and other external sources.
As part of its strategy to "live on the edge" of the network where the Wi-Fi experience matters most, 7SIGNAL observes the Wi-Fi interactions of over 6 million of its customers' wireless devices. These devices include workstations on wheels, point-of-sale devices, and tablets and laptops in hospitals, manufacturing and distribution centers, retail organizations and enterprise office spaces all around the globe. The platform essentially crowdsources Wi-Fi experiences from actual devices on the edge of the network so that organizations gain insight into the operational effectiveness of their people. This window into Wi-Fi performance enables 7SIGNAL to provide its customers with a unique view of their Wi-Fi networks and recommendations on how to optimize them 24 by 7.
Veli-Pekka Ketonen, 7SIGNAL's founder and Chief Innovation Officer explained the market challenge by stating, "Our customers are saying that it's devices…not networks that are often the issue. Innovations from wireless network vendors are outpacing what organizations can consume. So now there's tens of thousands of devices in organizations that have fallen behind in terms of performance expectations."
Russell Wangler, CTO of 7SIGNAL further commented on the challenges organizations face by stating, "There are hundreds of wireless LAN adapters from dozens of manufacturers, not to mention thousands of versions of software drivers. At 7SIGNAL, we're bringing clarity to the relationship between the device and the Wi-Fi network, and in the process, helping organizations, decrease downtime, achieve greater efficiency, and increase personal productivity."