802.11n

This week in WLAN adoption: John Marshall Law buys Aerohive, Virginia Union Univ. buys Aruba

In a new semi-regular feature on The Network Hub, I’m going to provide a quick run-down of newly announced wireless LAN projects. I get a lot of press releases from WLAN vendors about customer wins. I don’t get to write about all of them, but I can at least offer you a quick summary of the latest decisions your peers have made.

First up is John Marshall Law School, which is deploying an 802.11n wireless LAN network from Aerohive Networks on its Chicago campus. The school is replacing a legacy WLAN from Airspace (acquired by Cisco in 2005).  The old system was presenting interference and attenuation problems within the school’s century-old buildings. Centralized management was also an issue. The school chose Aerohive from a short list that also included Aruba, Meru and Xirrus.  The school chose Aerohive for its ease of deployment, controllerless architecture and wireless mesh capabilities, according to the case study.

Also this week, Aruba Networks announced that Virginia Union University has chosen their 802.1n wireless LAN to retrofit the wireless network on its 84-acre campus in Richmond (Click on this link for more information on Aruba’s specific solutions for the education market). The school had a network of independent, “Fat AP” access points that lacked centralized management capabilities and performance. Robert Gray, the schools IT director, said he chose Aruba’s AP-125 access points for their coverage and range. He is also using some of Aruba’s advanced management technologies, such as Adaptive Radio Management, Aruba’s policy-enforcement firewall and the AirWave Wireless Management Suite.

Meru and Aruba both lay claim to second position in 802.11n WLAN market

Would the real second fiddle please stand up and take a bow?

This week both Meru Networks and Aruba Networks have issued press releases claiming that they hold the second biggest share of the 802.11n wireless LAN market. Not only that - both vendors are citing the same research: Dell’Oro Group’s “First Quarter 2009 Wireless LAN Report.”

Yesterday, Meru announced that it had earned 12% of total vendor revenues for 802.11n products, ahead of Aruba (the long-standing second-place WLAN vendor).

Today Aruba sent out its own press release refuting Meru’s claim. Aruba claims a 15.5% market share. In his email, Aruba Head of Strategic Marketing Michael R. Tennefoss wrote: “Yesterday Meru issued a press release claiming that it had displaced Aruba from the #2 position, a statement not born out by the facts as Meru neglected to include Aruba’s substantial OEM sales.”

I’ve left a message with Dell’Oro’s president, Tam Dell’Oro for some clarification on this. I’ll update later with her response.

Wireless LAN spending is down, 802.11n spending is up

Market analyst firm Dell’Oro published a 1st quarter assessment of the wireless LAN market which showed that a severe 11% drop in enterprise spending from the 1st quarter of last year and a 15% drop from the 4th quarter of 2008.

Dell’Oro says Cisco’s huge share shrank a little, from 63.1% to 60% from a year earlier. HP ProCurve doubled its share from 1.7% to 3.1%, no doubt thanks to its acquisition of WLAN vendor Colubris. Aruba’s share is 8.1% and Motorola’s is 5.9%.

Despite the overall poor showing for WLAN, 802.11n technology sales grew 4% from the 4th quarter of last year, according to a report from PCWorld.  and 802.11n technology now makes up the majority of the WLAN sales for the first time ever.

Cisco’s domination in the wireless LAN market remains intact, but it’s interesting to see their share shrink just a little bit. In fact, looking at the numbers, the amount of market share Cisco lost equals ProCurve’s ENTIRE market share.

The WLAN market remains extremely crowded and some of the largest network infrastructure vendors not named Cisco (Brocade, Juniper) lack a true WLAN product line. I expect to see some more consolidation before the recession ends.

IEEE basics: Standards, wireless technology make communication convenient

During the IEEE 125th anniversary celebration on Monday, I had the pleasure of meeting IEEE President John Vig and shooting a brief video with him. Here, Vig discusses how the IEEE is involved in promoting standards of interoperability, and the importance of technological contributions made by technology professionals.

I also spoke with Technical Strategy Associates President and IEEE member, Dr. James F. Mollenauer. He took time out to talk about the development of 802.11 Wi-Fi standards and the importance of wireless standards as promoted by the IEEE.

Aruba is banging out the wireless LAN customer wins

Aruba Networks emails me quite often with wireless LAN customer wins. Either it is signing more customers than other WLAN vendors, or it simply publicizes its wins more often.  Usually I don’t bother to write about this customer news, but a couple of recent announcements have caught my eye.

First there was Aruba’s announcement that Carnegie Mellon University has just completed the deployment of 1,540 802.11n access points across its campus. Aruba said that Carnegie Mellon was particularly attracted to the company’s Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) technology, which simplified access points deployment and maintenance. The school was also attracted to Aruba’s Policy-Enforcement Firewall (PEF), which provides identity-based security, Quality of Service (QoS) control and traffic management.

Meanwhile over in Australia, IBM announced that it had won a contract from the government of New South Wales, to design, deploy and manage wireless LAN infrastructure for 463 secondary schools. IBM will install Aruba technology in all of those schools, providing wireless connectivity to more than 200,000 students and 25,000 teachers. That’s a big contract and a lot of access points.

Cisco tightens their belt while Aruba sharpens the ax

The notoriously frugal Cisco is tightening their belts a little tighter, more or less shutting their offices over the holidays and freezing hiring for a bit. They hope to save $2 billion, which isn’t small change even for the world’s largest networking equipment provider.

They also are looking to cut travel expenses, and since Cisco insiders tell us everyone at the company flies coach to begin with, we guess that means more TelePresence. Layoffs, however, are not planned, at least for now, according to Dow Jones Newswires:

Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) doesn’t have any layoffs planned at this point, according to Chairman and Chief Executive John Chambers. …

Chambers, speaking to analysts at a conference hosted by Credit Suisse, said that if the company was to have layoffs, it would be a one-time event, rather than a string of events.

Sounds like he’s hedging his bets, just in case, but it might be tough to cut the fat from Cisco’s already lean (for a company of their size) operation.

Aruba isn’t so optimistic. The company announced they will be cutting jobs to reduce operating costs by 10%, though the exact number getting laid off is unknown.

This is despite Aruba’s record revenues last quarter, which, according to Farpoint Group’s Craig Matthias, came at a price:

“If you look at Aruba’s margins, they have eroded some, and obviously discounting is a heavy element in winning deals,” Mathias said. “So I’m expecting that their margins probably won’t improve much with their sales. But this is an industry that will continue to grow, and it will accelerate into the future.”

It also calls into question what wireless vendors keep whispering to me: Their equipment — and business prospects — are counter-cyclical. The theory goes that wireless is a great way to cut costs: No more having to futz around to rewire desk connections, less physical wiring to lay down, etc. etc. But with such a crowded field of vendors, even the winners might have a tough time staying or getting profitable.

Further Reading:

• IT economic outlook: Not so good
• Aruba to Customers: Get 200% more WLAN bandwidth, free!: Aruba in more charitable times … a month ago.
• Overheard: How to keep your IT job during a recession

ElimiDate: Aruba, Meru come clean about acquisition dream dates

So shockingly it’s not every WLAN vendor’s dream to be swept off their feet by a big, strong wired networking vendor. Some are pretty happy being independent! And they’ll even say that as rumors swirl around otherwise!

The Financial Times reported that Juniper was on the prowl for a WLAN counterpart, and named and unnamed analysts predicted Meru and Aruba were the likely targets.

Nonsense! blogged Chris Silva from Forrester. Juniper’s ready to acquire, but Aruba is too expensive, and Meru is kinda funny but who knows.

Well, Aruba e-mailed us back to make it fairly clear they’re not interested in Juniper, either. Maybe they’re playing hard to get? Maybe they’re protecting a tender heart? Who knows, but this is what Mike Tennefoss, Aruba’s head of strategic marketing, had to say:

As we enter the next wave of networking, an inflection point marked by the pending final ratification of 802.11n, innovative technology will be required to build converged security, mobility and wireless solutions. Aruba has assembled a world-class team focused on this objective, and we believe our work will be best accomplished as an independent company.

Before Juniper gets too heart-broken, though, they might still find a match. Minutes before calling it a night yesterday, I got a call on my cell phone from Rachna Ahlawat, Meru’s vice president of strategic marketing.

“There is enough going on and enough customers who believe in us and invest us to keep us busy,” she said.

That being said, how would Meru like to be swept of their feet?

“We are open to all different options as the company goes forward,” Rachna said. IPO or acquisition, it matters not, she said, because the company was not designed for one or another exit strategy.

So maybe Juniper does still have a shot at love after all.

For more on the acquisition possibilities, and how the economy might affect them, read on about Juniper’s WLAN acquisition ambitions on SearchNetworking.com

Aruba to Customers: Get 200% more WLAN bandwidth, free!

Christmas is coming a little early this year (don’t you hate how it creeps up on you?) for Aruba customers. The WLAN equipment company announced the availability of their Adaptive Radio Management (ARM) 2.0 controller software, which can give Aruba mixed-mode Wi-Fi networks a significant boost by better optimizing how and when data is sent. In some tests conducted by Craig Mathias at the Farpoint Group, total throughput was up by as much as 200% in some scenarios (being vendor sponsored and all, take these “ideal scenarios” with a grain of salt).

The update is free to customers with existing support contracts, and also includes improvements on how the network handles “chattery” clients and how it deals with co-channel interference.

Further Reading:

• Read Aruba’s official announcement of their new ARM 2.0 Software
• Farpoint’s white paper on the tests (Warning:PDF)

A Shot at Love with Juniper Networks?

When it comes to enterprise Wi-Fi, the industry’s got enough drama for an MTV reality series, with constant bickering over what WLAN architecture’s better, or which .11n product truly supports PoE, or which skeezy AP went home with a stranger last night.

All this is to say it’s not surprising there’s a lot of back and forth about a rumored Juniper acquisition of Aruba or Meru. Mergermarket.com reported that two analysts and another source think a Juniper purchase is looming, and these two are the likely targets.

Chris Silva, Forrester analyst, had his own theory: Juniper, indeed, was ready to bite, but Aruba is too expensive and Meru might be too weird:

So, there it is, I’m drawing a line in the sand that the acquisition target is not Aruba, perhaps Meru and potentially another, even smaller vendor. Nothing short of hedging on my part, I suppose, but I will say this: WLAN is a logical line extension for Juniper, and I’m not ruling out - but rather expecting - at least one more acuqisition before the year is out.

We followed up with Chris to name names, and he kindly got back to us.

“It’s a tough call,” he e-mailed. “Bluesocket seems to be one of the last men standing. Aerohive is too small and too new and Extricom, while likely a cheaper buy than Meru, is the same technology without the customer list.”

Aruba, however, doesn’t seem to be sitting at home waiting for Juniper’s phone call. They’ve teamed up with Foundry to form a “co-marketing relationship between the companies’ wired and wireless LAN products for Federal customers.” A small step for LAN, to be sure, but maybe signaling a future giant leap (acquisition?) for LAN-kind?

Straight from Aruba’s announcement of the “relationship”:

“This collaboration affords Aruba and Foundry the opportunity to target a sizable Federal market in need of new and replacement secure networking infrastructure,” said Keerti Melkote, Aruba’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “We have steadily enhanced our suite of wired products, including wired remote networking technology, to complement our industry-leading wireless LANs. As Foundry’s first wireless LAN vendor to be designated an Ironpowered Technology Partner, we’re now in a unique position to co-market our products, together with Foundry switches and routers, across a broad range of Federal applications.”

Sounds awfully cuddly to me.

Can your access point help arrest a thief?

I got a chance to meet with the fine folks over at wireless networking vendor Colubris for the first time yesterday, and they were kind enough to give me a tour of their offices as well as explain some of their technology. Like most wireless networking vendors, they use a centralized controller to manage access permissions and hand offs, with what they say is an important difference.

The difference, Carl Blume, director of strategic marketing, and Tom Racca, vice president of marketing, said, is that Colubris avoids sending all the data traffic through the controller.

Instead, the controller first authenticates users on the wireless LAN, and then tells the acccess point (AP) how to route the data itself, which Carl and Tom said greatly cut down on the amount of redundant data flowing through the network. (They also said, like every other wireless vendor I have ever talked to, that they are the only ones who have solved 802.11n with standard PoE.)

Tom also relayed what I thought was an interesting story: Colubris access points can be set to work semi-autonomously, and if they get knocked offline they can be configured to automatically re-connect to the central controller. One school system, sick of APs wandering off, opened up a port in their firewall to let the devices reconnect even when they were out on the public Internet. Sure enough, a missing AP started phoning home, and the school was able to use the AP’s IP address to locate the missing access point … and arrest its thief.

We hear such “phone home” capabilities are going to become more common, and already stories of cameras and laptops photographing perps and posting their pictures are common. While maybe not a deal sealer, it’s certainly not bad as extra protection for devices that retail for $1000 and beyond.

Do you have any home phoning success stories?