News

Aruba provides nasty shock to both Cisco and Trapeze in corporate WiFi

It's only six months since the corporate WiFi market shook out, after Airespace went to Cisco and Trapeze executives rubbed their corporate hands, and said they would now be able to take over the market. And now, disregarded Aruba, best known as an island in the Antilles, is now claiming the number two slot in centrally managed WiFi, ahead of Trapeze, much to the delight of CEO Don LeBeau [left].

The news was released in an analysis by Dell'Oro Group, market research specialists in networking, and also in figures from Synergy Research Group - contradicting market expectations, by showing Aruba doing second best growth figures last quarter, behind market leader Cisco.

Cisco was seen as Trapeze's target market - for a buy-out - when it set up with its Ringmaster software. But when Cisco picked market leader Airespace, instead, many industry observers predicted a rapid drop in Airespace's market position. That, says Greg Collins [right] senior director at Dell'Oro Group, turns out not to be what happened.

Many said that in fact, Cisco had approached both Aruba and Trapeze, and were turned down. Trapeze directors confirmed this, and Aruba sources didn't dispute the reports.

"It's a checkbox for Cisco," said one analyst, asking not to be quoted by name. "We will probably do reports for them, which show that they're growing the market; in reality, it's just a feature of WiFi which they don't have, or didn't - and that was losing them business."

Trapeze, six months back, was very bullish about the Airespace takeover, saying that it left the field open for them. Competing network providers would not buy from a big rival, said product marketing director for EMEA, Michael Coci.

Coci, announcing a deal with Nortel, derided suggestions that Aruba might be catching up, saying that Trapeze had cornered all the big distribution channels.

He told NewsWireless, at the time: "This is our third major announcement. First was 3Com - nine months ago. Second was D-Link and third is Nortel. There will be further announcements with other well-known networking players, in the next quarter - we'll let the actual releases speak for themselves."

Coci had reportedly told friends that Aruba wasn't in a position to threaten Trapeze, saying that at the end of the day, "What partnerships has Aruba secured, how deep are they? Netgear and Alcatel aren't exclusive; Alcatel is just a resell deal."

The turnaround will be quite a shock to the market, despite predictions by Aruba, which has now set up in Europe. According to Collins at Dell'Oro, the Cisco takeover has done wonders for WiFi sales generally. "We do track Airespace technology, and we think that prior to the Cisco acquisition, first quarter, Airespace turned over around $7 m - not including OEM sales, branded product only - which has grown to $24 m for the third quarter of 2005."

Last month, Aruba released its "Mobile Edge" product, which CEO Don LeBeau said "represents the kind of sweeping change historically seen about once a decade in the computing and networking industry..." - and he announced it with a sale, to Medstar, a community-based, non-profit health care network and the largest health care provider in the Baltimore-Washington region.

Collins told NewsWireless that the market was growing fast, and all three pioneers had expanded. "They've done a really good job at penetrating the enterprise market; the architectures Aruba, and Airespace and Trapeze all introduced, have appealed to enterprise buyers."

What Aruba released today was the claim that it was the second largest vendor in selling WLAN switches; and multimode access points. Is that a valid claim? There are some opportunities for confusion, because Trapeze doesn't report sales figures to the research companies, who rely on returns from their OEM customers to get a "feel" for the market.

"Six months ago, Aruba was a lot smaller than they are today," said Greg Collins at Dell'Oro. Trapeze has grown, but Aruba has grown a little bit faster."

Further homework: Aruba Networks, Trapeze Networks, Cisco, WiFi