Meru Momentum in Education Sector Accelerates With Over 1,000 Schools Migrated From Their Microcell Products to Meru's Virtualized Wireless LAN Solution

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and DENVER, June 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- (ISTE 2010) – Meru Networks Inc., (Nasdaq: MERU), the leader in virtualized and optimized 802.11n enterprise networking, today announced that over 1,000 customers in both schools (K-12) and higher education markets have deployed Meru's virtualized wireless LAN (WLAN) solution across North America, Europe and Asia. In the last six months, the Company has seen an accelerated momentum of schools migrating from their legacy microcell products to Meru's virtualized WLAN solution to resolve the density, scalability and predictability issues inherent to the microcell architecture. Meru's virtualized WLAN is designed to transform the student's learning experience by outperforming microcell networks at up to 30 percent less cost.  

"Students bring on campus a variety of wireless devices, educators need to operate 1:1 learning initiatives, and administrators must support high density areas such as auditoriums, classrooms, lecture halls and sports facilities. We believe Meru's virtualized WLAN platform delivers the highest performance, reliability and predictability for this new, dynamic campus environment," said Ram Appalaraju, senior vice president of marketing at Meru Networks. "As more and more students and educators access the network and as usage of bandwidth-intensive applications increases, we believe campuses are finding that their microcell wireless networks cannot scale to meet the demands placed on their network.  Further, that the overall cost to operate a microcell solution is greater. Meru is designed to be simple to deploy and easy to operate – for a start, requiring up to 30 percent fewer access points to provide the same wireless coverage."

Meru's accelerated momentum in education is exemplified by the schools and districts around the world that are migrating from their microcell architecture to Meru's virtualized WLAN solution. This includes the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom; Winthrop University and Mississippi College of Law in the US; the Seoul Metro Office of Education, Daegu Sung-Gok Middle School, and Kyongbuk Eui-Sung High School in Korea; and Oita University, and Okayama University in Japan; and the Bialik and Christian College in Australia.  

"Numerous features made Meru the natural choice over microcell wireless networks, including Meru's single channel and channel layering options, robust security, user-friendly management, fair allocation of bandwidth to dissimilar clients and projected ROI," said James Hammond, associate vice president for information technology at Winthrop University. "Our technicians found deployment to be a snap with no physical site survey which saved time and expense. With Meru, we provide different levels of access, allowing Winthrop University users to connect seamlessly to the secured campus network, while guests easily connect to the public campus network."

Virtualized Wireless LAN Enables 1:1 Learning, Fewer Access Points

The adoption of laptop carts and 1:1 learning initiatives are driving the need for high-performance wireless coverage to the classroom. While school districts across the country are striving to provide each child with a laptop, the performance, cost and complexity of WLAN deployments remain a concern.  Meru's virtualized WLAN is designed to simplify deployment for resource-challenged schools with the ability to support more students per access point in denser user applications such as laptop carts.  Microcell technology typically requires an access point in every classroom, increasing complexity and cost.  In contrast, Meru's virtualized WLAN platform is able to achieve school-wide pervasive wireless coverage – delivering superior performance in higher density classroom and auditorium environments.

"We selected Meru's single-channel approach and ability to support high densities of wireless users – over 1,000 students on our campus in Hawthorn, Victoria," said David Micallef, head of technology for Bialik College. "With Meru, there is no channel interference and our students, teachers and staff are now connected in the classroom and across campus – online and wire-free."

Ubiquitous Wireless Coverage and Proliferation of Devices Drives Demand

Each semester, thousands of freshmen arrive at universities all over the world with the expectation to connect wirelessly to the campus network with a diverse range of mobile devices such as the iPad, smartphone, laptop and the iPod Touch, while running IPTV in their dorms. Because the adoption of wireless devices is a way of life in these environments, schools are increasingly looking to provide the most high-performance networks for their students, faculty and staff and offer a Wireless-like-Wire™ experience.  

Meru's virtualized WLAN architecture allows the school to plan and manage a campus-wide network and stack channels for extra capacity in dense user areas such as lecture halls and auditoriums. Meru also provides airtime fairness for all mobile devices, enabling students to achieve maximum performance as each device operate at different protocol rates.

For a live demonstration of Meru's solutions for the education market, Meru will be exhibiting at ISTE 2010 in Booth #2520 at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver this week. For more information on the event, please visit; http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/

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