Avaya today announced its cloud networking platform that essentially takes the software for managing a WiFi network and moves it to the cloud. This platform is built for both wired and wireless networks and provides control and visibility for enterprises and mid-size businesses.

Avaya says its platform gives IT professionals centralized management and visibility over their network without the complexity of controller appliances or overlay management software. Instead, hardware such as switches and access points that are typically installed on-premises are configured and managed in the cloud.

“The benefit here is simplicity. You don’t have to deploy and manage your own infrastructure,” says Prasad Pammidimukala, director of product management with Avaya. “You don’t have to worry about upgrades, provisioning, or maintenance — all of that is offloaded in the cloud and the Avaya DevOps team manages these in the cloud.”

IT managers can easily add, change, or modify network services from a dashboard allowing businesses to scale up or down as needed, Pammidimukala says. This dashboard also allows businesses to manage and view each customer’s network from the cloud, removing the need for a truck roll.

There are other companies that are doing similar things with cloud controlled WiFi,  but Pammidimukala claims that only Avaya provide both wired and wireless support.

Avaya is a spinoff of AT&T’s Lucent and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Its networking platform is in beta now and will be generally available in early November.