AirWave and Aruba To Collaborate on Wi-Fi Products and Management Tools Integration



Combined Solution Enables Unified Management of Aruba's Mobile Edge Solution and Stand-alone Access Points from Cisco and Other Vendors

Sunnyvale, CA and San Mateo, CA -/July 17, 2006 - Wi-Fi Technology News/- Aruba Networks and AirWave Wireless today announced the integration of Aruba's next-generation enterprise wireless products with the AirWave Wireless Management Suite end-to-end management tools for Wi-Fi networks. The integration provides enterprises that have a distributed Wireless LAN (WLAN) architecture consisting of many stand-alone "thick" access points with an easy migration path to the Mobile Edge, a centralized WLAN architecture that enables complete enterprise mobility across the LAN, WAN and Internet.

The integration also combines Aruba's best-in-class WLAN security and mobility with AirWave's vendor-independent intelligent control and management to deliver the industry's first non-disruptive upgrade path to a centralized WLAN. In addition, Aruba and AirWave announced a strategic marketing alliance to jointly promote the integrated solution to customers and distribution partners.

"At Yale, we started installing a Wi-Fi network years ago with stand-alone Cisco access points and recently switched to the Aruba platform because of its advanced security features and superior performance," said Joe Paolillo, director of network services at Yale University. "This integration will save us time and money because now we can manage that older legacy environment infrastructure from the same console we use to manage the Aruba hardware."

The vendor-independent AirWave software supports Aruba's extensive Wi-Fi product line as well as wireless infrastructure from multiple other Wi-Fi hardware vendors, including Cisco, Symbol, and 3Com. This enables customers to manage even a heterogeneous network with both "thick" stand-alone access points and next-generation Aruba hardware from a single management console. As a result, enterprises that have been interested in moving to a centralized WLAN architecture, but may have been reluctant to take on the burden of managing two separate WLANs, can now do so easily. By eliminating the need to replace existing hardware or use multiple different management solutions for a diverse network, Aruba and AirWave have dramatically reduced long-term wireless network operating costs.

"Many existing AirWave customers are beginning to convert from their first-generation Wi-Fi products to Aruba's powerful next-generation product line," said Greg Murphy, chief operating officer for AirWave. "With AirWave's multi-architecture support, instead of having to rip out their entire legacy infrastructure all at once, these customers can manage both the older products and powerful new Aruba solutions from the AirWave console, making the transition less time-consuming and costly," he added.

Customers install the AirWave Management Platform? (AMP) software on a server in the network operations center, and use the AirWave console to discover, monitor, and manage their Aruba wireless infrastructure. With AirWave's onscreen monitoring views, network administrators can see detailed real-time information on each user connected to the network, as well as historical usage reports dating back a full year or more. The Aruba access points and controllers gather RF data from the environment and report it to the AirWave Management Platform, which uses the data to generate location information and accurate RF heatmaps.

"When a user calls, it's absolutely critical for our IT support staff to quickly see where he is and assess how the network is performing in that area," said Paolillo, "With AirWave and Aruba, we immediately get the detailed real-time and historical information we need to locate him and resolve the problem," he noted.

"The first-generation WLANs installed by early adopters were built around a distributed architecture of thick APs, and more than five million thick APs have been deployed. However, these networks are less secure and scalable, and are more complex and costly to manage than Aruba's centralized WLANs," said Gary Singh, senior director of product marketing for Aruba. "These forward-thinking organizations should not be stuck with old technology or burdened with excessive operating and management costs. AirWave's monitoring and compliance management capabilities will help our customers maintain control over their entire wireless infrastructure, reduce operating costs and enable a smooth transition to a centralized WLAN architecture."

The Aruba and AirWave solutions are available from the two companies and value-added resellers and integrators.


About AirWave
AirWave Wireless, Inc. is the leading developer of network management software solutions that provide administrators a single point of intelligent control to monitor, analyze, and configure their wireless network infrastructure. The AirWave Wireless Management Suite supports hardware from leading wireless vendors, including Aruba Networks, Avaya, Cisco (Aironet and Airespace), Colubris Networks, Enterasys, Juniper Networks, LANCOM Systems, Nomadix, ProCurve by HP, Proxim, Symbol, and many others. The privately held company is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and is backed by investors Westbury Equity Partners, Ignition Partners and Idealab. The company's patent-pending AirWave Management Platform? software is sold through a global network of value-added resellers and systems integrators. For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.airwave.com.


About Aruba Networks, Inc.
Aruba Networks is a fast-growing enterprise infrastructure company enabling the Mobile Edge, an evolutionary network architecture that represents a new approach to transitioning enterprise networks from a fixed, port-based architecture to an architecture centered on secure, identity-based mobility. The Mobile Edge simultaneously delivers mobile data and VoIP services, as well as a common user experience to mobile workers in the office, at home and on the road, by creating a secure mobility overlay that spans the LAN, the WAN and the Internet. To deliver the Mobile Edge, Aruba manufactures and markets a complete line of fixed and modular mobility controllers, wired and wireless access points, an advanced mobility software suite, and a mobility management system. Privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California, Aruba has operations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and employs staff around the world. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com.