Juniper selects Meru’s WLAN platform

Juniper Networks today said it has inked a partnership with Meru Networks to integrate its line of WLAN and wireless VoIP products with Juniper’s IP routing and security portfolio. Though essentially a marketing and sales deal, the partnership gives Juniper another technology foothold in the enterprise WLAN space, a space dominated by networking competitor Cisco Systems.

Under the agreement, Meru will become a preferred member under Juniper’s J-Partner program, Juniper’s name for its sizable web of resellers, strategic alliances, technology partnerships and distributors. The two companies’ combined solution will integrate Meru’s Air Traffic Control WLAN management technology and Juniper’s wireline and wireless networking gear, capped off with Juniper security control.

While Meru bills itself as the “leader in wireless VoIP,” the deal doesn’t appear to be overtly focused on voice-over-WLAN or fixed-mobile convergence. Meru’s Air Traffic Control solution is a packet management technology, designed to bring quality of service to the enterprise WLAN, allowing the network support multiple real-time applications, including voice. The platform’s management and scaling capabilities, however, bring many of the capabilities to the network of the WLAN switch, one of the hottest areas in 802.11 today.

Cisco Systems currently leads access point sales, but it bought into the WLAN switch market this summer with its acquisition of Airespace with an eye on catching up to leading switch vendor Symbol Technologies. Other vendors followed suit, either with investments of their own or through the development of their own switching products, signaling a major shift in the intelligence of the network from the access point to the router. Motorola has invested in Trapeze Networks, and Colubris has developed its own switch-like multi-service controller.

With the Meru deal in place and a previous partnership with Colubris for access point technology, Juniper now has feelers in both the public and private WLAN sectors. For Meru this certainly isn’t its first partnership. It now has similar partnerships in place with both Siemens and Avaya.