Company Overview

Meru Networks delivers the industry’s most scalable and cost-effective solution to enable assured delivery of mobile applications for leading enterprises that are serious about harnessing the power of mobility for their businesses.

Meru’s Mobile SCALE solution enables companies, hospitals, schools, and government organizations to ensure that users have secure and invariable access to these applications over a mobile infrastructure, without the limits of conventional Wireless LAN (WLAN) solutions. Meru customers experience no difference in application performance between their wired and wireless networks, regardless of the number of clients or the demanding nature of the mission-critical applications deployed. Founded in 2002, Meru is based in Sunnyvale, California.

Background

Since the first 802.11b standard products shipped in 1999, the market has evolved from standalone access points and NICs deployed by early adopters and company departments to support casual data applications like web and email. As usage grew, the industry was challenged to add enterprise-class security and better management, first using controllers of distributed networks of independent access points, and then giving way to a third-generation approach using thin APs and edge controllers. Most of today’s major vendors, including Meru Networks, offer customers these third generation solutions that work well for providing secure wireless access in casual data applications.

Going forward, however, usage models are shifting significantly from casual data application access for a few users, to high-density usage throughout companies or university lecture halls, and deployments involving mission-critical applications that combine high-capacity data with wireless VoIP, asset tracking or even video in retail, manufacturing, and healthcare environments. These pervasive mission-critical mobility applications spurred Meru to develop its fourth generation solution utilizing networks of coordinated APs, working together in virtual cells, operating on a single-channel span that may be layered to add capacity on demand. Meru's solution was recognized by Gartner, which ranked the company as the most visionary infrastructure provider in its 2006 WLAN Magic Quadrant report. Any CIO considering an initial WLAN deployment, or an expansion of an existing one—even if initially for casual data usage—must look closely at their plans for mobile applications and user density, and match those requirements to the system in which they invest today.

Assured mobile application delivery requires a network infrastructure built on the following principles:

• Scalability
• Performance and reliability
• Security
• Management and deployment
• Solution assurance

An enterprise or organization that is serious about using these pervasive mobile applications to provide better services to customers, students, taxpayers, or patients must also be serious about the underlying wireless infrastructure on which these applications run. Wireless is no longer simply about going mobile. It is now about Mobile SCALE.