Guest post by Rob Conant, CEO of Cirrent

Today at CONNECTIONS in San Francisco, surrounded by the world’s leading connected home products, we officially announced the availability ofCirrent. After two years in development, Cirrent is now available to enable connected products—including the many on display at CONNECTIONS—to connect to Wi-Fi instantly and securely, right out of the box, with zero user intervention.

In my previous companies, I would have loved to have these capabilities: To get a cellular-like user experience with Wi-Fi chips—just turn it on and it connects. To make it easy for consumers to use connected products while actually increasing security. To add capability into my existing Wi-Fi products with no changes at all to the hardware. But this wasn’t possible until now.

We’re excited to open up our service today to any company making Wi-Fi connected products, so companies big and small can make their products delightful to use, while reducing the costs of support and returns and increasing security.

88% of consumer electronic devices shipped last year were Internet-enabled, but Wi-Fi for products is hard to use, confusing, and is both the #1 buying criteria and the #1 support issue for connected products. With 1 in 5 products failing to connect to the Internet at all, we must do much better.

Cirrent is solving this problem. We’ve teamed with broadband providers in the U.S. and Western Europe who have created millions of home hotspots, which provide a separate, secure Wi-Fi connection that is managed separately from the subscriber’s private network. Now Cirrent can, for the first time, let products use these hotspots to connect to the Internet automatically.  You’ll see what a big deal this is when you use one of these products.

While addressing ease of use, Cirrent also improves security. After working in IoT for more than a decade, I’ve experienced firsthand the many connected product security weaknesses that leave home Wi-Fi networks vulnerable to being hacked. With Cirrent, product companies can improve security without having to become network or security experts. This accelerates time to market, and achieves the dream of many product companies: improving both ease of use and security at the same time.

We’ve been able to do this in a way that reduces cost for product companies. By solving the #1 support issue product companies face, we reduce returns and support costs, improving the bottom line for connected product companies.

Connected products can make our lives easier in so many ways, but not if they’re too difficult to connect. Now, with Cirrent’s instant, secure connection capability, we can look forward to an even better Internet of things.

If you’re interested in learning more about Cirrent, check out our website and sign up for an account to try it out yourself at Cirrent.com.

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