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I read Aruba's whitepaper on Rightsizing the WLAN, and even blogged on it a while back:

http://www.cwnp.com/community/articles/network_rightsizing_kool-aid_free_whitepaper.html

Today, I read a whitepaper from Cisco bashing Aruba's stance. At the time I blogged, I agreed with Aruba. Now...I still agree with Aruba. :) Cisco's whitepaper is the biggest bunch of marketing spin I've ever read. Aruba, Motorola, Xirrus, Aerohive, Meru, and others all preach the same thing: "The All-Wireless Enterprise" -- and for good reasons. Those reasons are: 1) better ROI and 2) lower CAPEX/OPEX. All of that smoke-n-mirrors about 'Wi-Fi isn't secure' and 'Ethernet ports are cheaper' and 'Apps have to have dedicated bandwidth' is so much fluff.

Are we to believe that Cisco has it right, and everyone else (a very large group of highly-innovative, established vendors) has it wrong? Further, are we to believe that this whitepaper isn't marketing spin? How could it not be, given Cisco's need to sell Ethernet ports?

Aruba's whitepaper was more-or-less Kool-Aid free, but our friends at Cisco has made up for it by putting twice as much into this one as the normal whitepaper. Sad...so sad.