We've had good experience with Aruba Networks, their support (online/phone/email/hands-on) is excellent, and their products pretty stable. The only issue we've had has been with reliability based on clients' wireless cards (broadcom card issues with certain versions of the controller), but they have moved fairly quickly to get those resolved.
Having a centralized way of managing your wireless sounds like an expensive thing, but not when you take into consideration the ability to monitor, manage (Per AP channel/signal settings, etc..), and troubleshoot your access points and clients from one location. Specially since it would be pretty troublesome to go through rooms to troubleshoot connectivity issues.
The Aruba controller is pretty configurable (GUI is almost 'too' configurable), but like I mentioned before, the support is excellent and getting things setup or questions answered is a breeze (at least in my experience). You setup different types of configuration profiles (authentication/association/access) and 'associate' them to your SSID(s)--like I said pretty granular configuration.
They provide you with a Virtual RF planner (and other tools) to plan wireless coverage for your sites.
Sounds like Aruba has gained some market share recently, so I doubt they're going away.
Something that might help you:
http://www.arubanetworks.com/technology/design_guides.php