Meru Networks Expands Executive Leadership Team With the Appointment of Two Industry Veterans

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Meru Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: MERU), the leader in virtualized 802.11n enterprise wireless networking, today announced Larry Vaughn as the new Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Services and Support, and Philip Simmons as the new Senior Vice President of Engineering.  Both Vaughn and Simmons bring strong leadership skills, as well as global and domestic industry expertise to both complement and contribute to Meru's global growth initiatives.

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"This is an exciting time in our company's evolution," said Ihab Abu-Hakima, President and CEO, Meru Networks.  "We continue to strengthen our leadership team to ensure we have a solid foundation to support our focus on growth – across products, markets and geographies. I believe both Larry and Phil's knowledge of IT, networking and the wireless market will enable them to have immediate and significant impact in expanding the market reach and success of Meru."

With more than 25 years of high-tech experience working for companies such as Novell, Nortel, Unisys and IBM, Larry Vaughan brings proven sales leadership and success to Meru Networks as Senior Vice President heading up worldwide Sales, Support and Services for the company. Vaughn joined Meru from BMC Software where he was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Services for Growth and Emerging Markets.  Vaughn stepped into this role after serving as the Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations for Sales and Services for BMC.  Prior to BMC, Vaughn was with Enterasys Networks, where he served as the Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Service, driving the company's strategic revenue initiatives, delivering secure networking solutions to enterprise-class customers, strengthening relationships with key systems integrator partners and building a best-in-class service organization.  Prior to joining Enterasys, Vaughn served as a Vice President of Sales for Novell and Bay Networks/Nortel.  He also held several executive sales and service management positions at Unisys during his seven years with the company.  Vaughn began his career with IBM where he worked 11 years in various sales and sales management positions.  

"I am excited to be a part of an innovative company that is at the forefront of transforming enterprise networks throughout the world to all-wireless networks," said Vaughn.  "I look forward to expanding Meru's reach into the enterprise market with a combined service and solution offering that delivers the simplicity of a wired network, with the advantages of mobility."

Philip Simmons joined Meru Networks in January of this year as the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Engineering, bringing more than 20 years of engineering experience in data, voice and video communications, specializing in architecture and design of DSL, Ethernet, wireless and telephony technologies. Prior to Meru, Simmons was responsible for DSL engineering at Motorola following the acquisition of Netopia where he served as Senior Vice President of Engineering.  Simmons has been active in the development of international standards with participation at the IEEE, ATM Forum and DSL Forum, including serving as editor for the work on Voice-over-DSL.  Prior to Netopia, Simmons held various hardware and systems architecture engineering positions at StarNet Technologies, AMD, Retix and GEC. Simmons has been published on many occasions and holds nine patents.

"I joined Meru because I was very excited at the opportunity to be part of a team that is bringing true innovation to the wireless and networking market," said Simmons.  "I am fortunate to have the chance to be part of a world-class development team with a clear strategy to continue to innovate the Wi-Fi experience with a product set that I believe is both best-in-class and disruptive to the market."

About Meru Networks

Founded in 2002, Meru Networks provides 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 Fortune 500 enterprises, healthcare, education, retail, manufacturing, hospitality and government. 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 ability to leverage the skills of its new executives to contribute to Meru's global growth initiatives, to enable the new executives to have an immediate and significant impact in expanding the market reach and success of Meru, to transform enterprise networks throughout the world to all-wireless networks, to expand Meru's reach into the enterprise market with a combined service ad solution offering that delivers the simplicity of a wired network, with the advantages of mobility, to continue to innovate the Wi-Fi experience with a product set that is best-in-class and disruptive to the market. 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.