http://www.extremenetworks.com/extreme-networks-agrees-to-acquire-wireless-lan-business-from-zebra-technologies/
It is quite interesting the announcement yesterday of the acquisition of the Zebra WLAN portfolio, previous Motorola, previous Symbol Technologies by Extreme Networks.
As one who was front and center in the WLAN space before 1999 and part of the company that co-founded the Wi-Fi Alliance; commoditization of the networking and WLAN market has somewhat and occurred.
Traditional networking companies are trying to drive up their valuation as more and more hardware has become virtualized following the move to the cloud as well as the wireless space.
What Extreme Networks has acquired (via the Zebra WLAN portfolio) will significantly increase their breadth and depth in the WLAN space as well as to their overall product and WLAN market valuation.
Extreme already had an excellent product WLAN product solution from Enterasys.
Major innovations of this acquisition in combination with the Zebra WLAN technology portfolio will drive down costs, improve operations, and lower risk, i.e. (security). All good for the healthcare WLAN space and for those IT managers looking to improve the bottom line, enhance security to include cybersecurity, and how to handle and address the BYOD numbers and applications on devices.
The Zebra WLAN acquisition also includes the latest and greatest first ever BTLE integrated into the WLAN.
BTLE integrated into the WLAN enables will allow improvements and cost savings in business process over all vertical markets never known.
Zebra provides extremely innovative WLAN technology, but also network and wireless planning (previous Wireless Valley), and an agnostic way of intrusion or cyber security protection (previous AirDefense), and finally some really smart offerings such as a complete network switch/WLAN/server/BTLE offering in a RJ45 box. A disruptive offering in the marketplace to favor Extreme to say the least.
The IP portfolio, the WLAN potential pipeline revenue, and the high end client base and channel that Extreme has received from this acquisition is major league.
Extreme now has it seems the best portfolio of the WLAN enterprise solution set to include the technology and folks that were a part of the original founding of the Wi-Fi Alliance back in 2000.
The upside to both Extreme Networks and Zebra and Extreme clients is a true win-win.
Extreme it seems is poised to enjoy and grow a marketshare competitive WLAN networking advantage in all vertical markets.
