Aruba To Buy Chinese Wireless Mesh Maker

Wireless network maker Aruba Networks has announced plans to buy Azalea Networks, the leading maker of outdoor wireless mesh networks in China. Outdoor mesh is a niche, but the deal gives Aruba a bigger foothold in an expanding market, the company says.

Mesh covers big areas without wires

Wireless mesh networks use a web of wireless links to provide coverage of a large geographical area without the need for wires, but has until now been a separate network category.  “Is outdoor a niche? It’s $200 million worth of niche,” said Roger Hockaday, Aruba’s director of marketing. “This is slightly different from outdoor enterprise networks, which we had before, covering larger geographical areas.”

Azalea puts wireless networks in big sites such as petrochemical plants and sports stadia, and made its most public network for the Beijing Olympics. It is not a metropolitan Wi-Fi vendor, however, said Hockaday: “That’s just best efforts connection, Azalea works in areas which need high quality for services such as video, and reliable networks – so wireless can become the primary network”

For the Chinese market, Azalea has built its own routing protocols, which avoid having a single gateway onto the wireless part of the mesh network, and has demonstrated high speed handoff for moving clients.

“There are two parts to this: we get a broader set of products, and we get an entry into China with an experienced team,” said Hockaday.  Azalea has 100 people in Beijing, and has been around for five years. It is the market leader in China, four times as big as Cisco in wireless there, and three times as big as [mesh specialist] Strix.”

For small networks up to 40 or 50 access points, Azalea provides “controllerless” networks, similar to the “hive” approach of Aerohive, while for larger networks, it uses designated wireless controllers. A typical network costs around $24,000, said Hockaday.

Aruba will pay approximately $27 million (£18m) in stock and up to $13.5 million (£9m) in cash over two years for Azalea, which has annual revenues of around $5 million (£3.33m).

Aruba’s ambitions are also taking it in other directions, with a cloud-centric network solution for branch offices, and has expanded its wireless network management product to cover wired networks