Brocade And Motorola Partner; Brocade To Dump Meru Networks

Brocade and Motorola have formed an OEM deal and a partnership to develop a unified wired and wireless communications strategy bridging WLAN, VoWLAN, Fixed Mobile Convergence and cloud services infrastructure. Brocade will start selling the Motorola products in November 2009 under the Brocade Mobility Series and will stop selling Meru Products. Brocade is committed to supporting existing Meru customers for the next five years.

Brocade and Motorola made it clear that the partnership is more than just an OEM deal. Brocade and Motorola want to push networking and communications beyond the technical silos of VoIP, Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN), wired Ethernet, 802.11 WLAN and 3G/4G networking. It's an ambitious partnership that both companies expect to reap technical and market advantages.

Motorola brings technology to Brocade that can help both companies create useful wireless products. Besides 802.11 wireless equipment, Motorola brings 3G/4G technology that would be worked into Brocade's small office access points that can serve as primary or secondary network connections and can be centrally managed. Motorola's dual-mode handsets and PBX interconnect gives Brocade a path to sell wired and wireless voice products.

The phased approach starts with Brocade selling Motorola 802.11 equipment, including access points, controllers and Motorla's wireless security site from the Air Defense acquisition in 2008. Brocade will begin taking orders in November, 2009 and expects to be shipping products in December 2009. The Mobility product line will include the Mobility 7131 single or dual 802.11 a/b/g/n radios; the Mobility 5181 802.11 a/b/g outdoor AP; and the Mobility 300 dependent AP. Brocade will also ship the Mobility RFS7000 and RFS 6000 mobility controllers which manage multiple access points. Finally, Brocade will be selling Motorola's wireless security line, Air Defense Enterprise, which includes live RF analysis, spectrum analysis and advanced wireless forensics.

This is a big move for Brocade and the next phase of the partnership has the goal of integrating Motorola's wireless equipment with Brocade's network management suite providing a single framework for security, quality of service, and endpoint management. The two companies will collaborate on technology and products for integrated voice and unified communications services, such as VoWLAN and fixed mobile convergence, roaming which allows voice callers to seamlessly roam from cellular to wireless. The final phase is to create a technology and product platform for large enterprises to service providers to offer large scale centrally managed combined wireless and voice services.