Education Organizations Accelerating Migration to Meru Networks' Virtualized WLAN

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- (EDUCAUSE 2010) -- Meru Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: MERU), the leader in virtualized and optimized 802.11n enterprise wireless networking, has migrated over 500 microcell-based WLAN education customers worldwide to Meru's virtualized wireless LAN solution in the last six months.  With the start of a new school year, students are introducing a greater number of mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads and Android devices, and educators are incorporating digital learning into their curriculum, greatly impacting the density and convergence of applications over the wireless network.  In the last six months, over 500 schools around the world faced WLAN performance and throughput issues with legacy microcell-based offerings.  These microcell-based solutions did not address customer needs for optimal performance under high density and unpredictable environments.  Meru's virtualized WLAN solution is designed to help these customers realize significant performance and throughput benefits, and lower operating costs due to overall efficiency improvements and by using up to 30 percent fewer access points.  Meru's customers now have the ability to improve the overall learning experience for their students, and deliver a Wireless-Like-Wire™ performance and security experience across campuses.

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"With the school year just getting underway, we have seen a huge increase in Wi-Fi enabled devices and demand for wireless network resources," said Eric Hawley, associate vice president, Utah State University.  "Meru's virtualized WLAN has elegantly scaled to meet these needs and allowed our students to take advantage of the network from any spot on campus.  Our faculty, staff and guests are also able to utilize the network without impacting the performance inside of classrooms or administration offices.  The new school year has brought lots of new devices but no WLAN problems. It truly gives us a competitive advantage as students evaluate their options in the years to come."

"With the beginning of another school year comes an influx in the number of mobile devices and applications on campus, driving higher densities and the demand for higher performing wireless services," said Ram Appalaraju, senior vice president of marketing, Meru Networks.  "Wireless users on campus need a best-in-class experience for video, voice and data application workflows.  And IT organizations are demanding simple, predictable, and scalable wireless performance.  Meru's innovation has enabled several hundred education institutions to realize outstanding business and service level results while minimizing complexity."

Increased Density Drives Adoption of Meru's Virtualized WLAN

Today, educators are incorporating online learning initiatives such as multimedia-rich lessons, 1:1 laptop initiatives, videoconferencing, and distance learning.  Meru's Service Assurance Platform is designed to handle high density environments, as proven by our WLAN 500™ demonstration.  Institutions can now receive high performance and predictably across campus, and deliver the Wireless-like-Wire reliability and experience expected by their students.

"In the last few years, we have seen a rapid increase in client density on campus," said Chris Carey, director of technology, Bellarmine College Preparatory.  "Previously, we had deployed a microcell WLAN that could not scale to meet our changing needs and the network performance greatly suffered, causing us to look for a more scalable solution.  We chose Meru's Virtualized WLAN, which has delivered the highest quality wireless experience to our students and staff as our density has continued to rise and our mission-critical applications have grown in bandwidth requirements."

"The higher education networking sector is being driven by student demand for broadband everywhere on campus, as well as faculty and staff requiring maximum mobile bandwidth for research, collaboration, and distance learning," said Andrew Borg, senior research analyst for wireless and mobility, Aberdeen Group.  "Students and faculty alike want to be able to roam throughout campus with uncompromised connectivity, no matter where they may be."

Meru Enables an Enhanced Learning Environment with Critical Application Support

Interactive, multimedia tools such as digital textbooks and social media sites are being utilized from kindergarten rooms to university laboratories to both provide cost savings and increase collaboration.  Students at Filton College, for instance, are able to access these tools in an efficient manner without drops in service and delays in the lesson.  Students utilize these tools from tablet devices like the iPad inside the classroom without interfering with students working on laptops, as Meru can support the increased density with the highest-performance levels.

"Meru's solution was rapidly deployed without the need for extensive site surveys or channel planning.  The great benefit of Meru's technology is that it can be readily adapted and scaled to meet the ever changing needs of the site as the school continues to expand and diversify," said Bobby Wilson, information technology team leader, Filton College, United Kingdom.  "Meru's system has allowed Filton to increase the provision of devices to both staff and students.  Users at the school can move freely within buildings and inside the classrooms while maintaining their fast, reliable and secure connection. There is now confidence in delivering lessons and instructions wirelessly."

For a live demonstration of Meru's virtualized WLAN solutions for the education market, Meru will be exhibiting at EDUCAUSE 2010 in booth #1648/1650 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California this week. For more information on the event, please visit; http://www.educause.edu/E2010.

About Meru Networks

Founded in 2002, Meru Networks develops and markets a virtualized wireless LAN solution that cost-effectively optimizes the enterprise network to deliver the performance, reliability, predictability and operational simplicity of a wired network, with the advantages of mobility.  Meru's solution represents an innovative approach to wireless networking that utilizes virtualization technology to create an intelligent and self-monitoring wireless network, and enables enterprises to migrate their business-critical applications from wired networks to wireless networks, and become all-wireless enterprises.  Meru's solutions have been adopted in major industry vertical markets, including education, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing and retail.  Meru is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has operations in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.  For more information, visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300.  

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding Meru Networks expectations, hopes, plans, intentions or strategies, including, but not limited to statements regarding Meru's success as a preferred wireless LAN solution provider, the migration from microcell architecture to Meru's virtualized solution, Meru's ability to transform learning initiatives and enhancing the learning experience, the ability to provide improved wireless coverage with fewer access points and lower costs, Meru's continued momentum with educational institutions, and the ability for university information technology departments to plan and manage a campus-wide network. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they do not fully materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties include those described in Meru Networks' documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Meru Networks as of the date hereof, and Meru Networks assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Meru Networks is a registered trademark of Meru Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Meru Networks, Inc.