Meru Networks Defines New Market Category With Industry-First Wireless Network Assurance Platform

Service Assurance Manager Ensures Best User Experience, Simplifies WLAN
Operations and Significantly Reduces Enterprise Network Operation Costs
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Meru Networks, Inc., the pioneer in 802.11n enterprise networking, today
announced it is creating a new category of wireless service assurance with the
introduction of the Meru Networks Service Assurance Manager (SAM) platform. Meru
Networks SAM is designed to rein in the increasing operational costs that come
with operating business-critical applications on all-wireless networks and
accelerate the transition of the $16 billion enterprise wired Ethernet switching
market over to Meru Switched Wireless. This industry-first offering breaks from
the legacy wireless approach of deploy-then-manually-troubleshoot to proactively
and dynamically validating the end-to-end service levels of the entire wireless
network on a continual basis. This approach enables enterprises to enhance
end-user experience by detecting potential performance problems for business
critical applications before users encounter them, leading to significant
lowering of operating costs, higher productivity for end-users and greater ROI
for application and infrastructure investments.

"Operational costs are a big concern for organizations looking to expand the
enterprise network, whether it`s wireless or wired growth," said Andrew Borg,
senior research analyst for Aberdeen Group. "For example, our recent research
has shown that top-performing organizations doubled their WLAN coverage area,
which resulted in a 63 percent increase in the cost of managing the WLAN and a
69 percent increase in the number of employees required to support it. If Meru
can help reduce the costs associated with managing the enterprise network, it`s
going to be welcome news for CIOs and CFOs alike."

With the rapidly expanding use of wireless, evolving from a network of
convenience to one of necessity for business-critical applications, like
emergency medical response (EMR) and patient monitoring in hospitals, it`s
imperative that enterprises have the ability to ensure that service levels are
consistently being met end-to-end across the network. The cost and complexity of
operating and assuring optimal service levels for a business-critical WLAN
network can skyrocket with its increased scale and the expanding number of
devices and applications running over wireless. However, Meru SAM`s unique
design and intuitive approach provides organizations a cost-effective solution
for ensuring the successful roll-out of new business-critical applications over
wireless networks by proactively and continuously measuring and validating that
the performance characteristics of the end-to-end network meets the application
needs. In addition, the new solution helps organizations ensure 24x7 network
availability and performance levels, and can detect and notify IT staff of
network issues even before end-users experience any loss of productivity due to
network issues. Meru`s SAM enables enterprises to assess, deploy and manage the
network far more effectively than ever before, producing real savings for the
enterprise.

"We`re always looking for ways to do more with less. But no matter what we do,
we`re still expected to make sure all of our employees are able to be as
productive as possible, and that means 24x7 access to our business-critical
applications, such as HCIS (Health Care Information System), nurse-call systems
and our voice systems," said Alan Williams, network specialist from St. Joseph`s
Health System. "Using Meru`s Service Assurance Manager gives us the confidence
of knowing that our doctors and nurses can deliver the highest service level to
our patients - no matter where they are within the network - and our team spends
significantly less time on troubleshooting and more time on delivering
applications to our end users."

Meru`s SAM brings a new proactive approach to the industry and challenges the
current paradigm of wireless management by harnessing the power of the company`s
innovative single channel architecture, which allows all access points within a
network to operate on the same channel, creating a "neighborhood watch" for
end-to-end service assurance. The new solution runs the wireless client
connectivity, latency and performance throughput tests from a central location
using virtual clients on each access point without requiring any extra sensor
hardware or client software to be added to the network, saving organizations
time and money. As a part of the E(z)RF Wireless Operations Suite, Service
Assurance Manager is an application fully integrated with Meru`s Network Manager
application and not only notifies IT managers of the problems but also helps
quickly provide diagnosis and root cause of the problems.

"Meru is launching the wireless service assurance category to solve the problem
of assuring predictable end-to-end application performance, providing our
customers with wireless networks as a new enterprise utility," said Ihab
Abu-Hakima, president and CEO at Meru Networks. "From the very beginning - with
the introduction of our single-channel architecture platform to being the first
to deliver 802.11n enterprise products to market - Meru has been focused on
offering wireless networking solutions that `just work` - simple and easy - and
with SAM we`re broadening our product portfolio to offer our customers solutions
that assuage the growing complexity and potential expenses of their enterprise
network operations."

Availability

Meru Networks E(z)RF Service Assurance Manager is available immediately. To
learn more about today`s announcement, visit the Meru Networks company blog,
Signal2Noise. And, for more detailed technical information on the solution visit
http://bit.ly/Meru_Networks_SAM.

About Meru Networks

Founded in 2002, Meru Networks develops and markets wireless LAN infrastructure
solutions that use virtualization to deliver pervasive, high-fidelity wireless
service for business-critical voice, video and data applications. The company
first introduced its award-winning virtual cell wireless architecture in 2003,
and Meru products embody a complete departure from typical hub-based WLAN
approaches, offering a wireless solution with levels of performance,
reliability, security and cost-effectiveness previously found only in wired
networking environments. Meru's solutions have been adopted in all 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.

Voce Communications
Stephanie Luttringhaus, 650-743-9352
luttringhaus@vocecomm.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009