[May 31, 2005]

Alcatel�s Alliance With Aruba Comes to Fruition

BY ROBERT LIU

Just two months after formalizing an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) relationship with Aruba Networks, Alcatel on Tuesday plans to show the world that its new partnership with the wireless LAN vendor is starting to bear fruit.

On Tuesday, the French telecommunications equipment giant will unveil the second-generation of its OmniAccess family of enterprise-class WLAN switches for managing security and reliability of voice and data, giving customers a tenfold increase in access point support compared with the previous line. The first generation was built on technology from Airespace but when Alcatel’s competitor Cisco Systems announced plans to acquire the other WLAN hardware manufacturer, Alcatel was left scrambling for a new OEM partner.

“ Aruba gives them the WLAN piece they need for a complete VOIP solution for their IP-PBX business,” said Ken Dulaney, analyst at Gartner.

The result is three new stackable units to the OmniAccess family: the OmniAccess 4304, an eight-port 10/100 switch that supports up to four access points; the OmniAccess 4308, an eight-port 10/100 switch that supports up to 16 access points; and the OmniAccess 4324, a 24-port 10/100 switch with support for up to 48 access points. The switches support 10/100/1000 Ethernet speeds and Power over Ethernet capabilities. The products are available immediately starting at $2,595 for an eight-port switch.

Alcatel officials are quick to point out the manageability of the new products, which are integrated into Alcatel’s OmniVista Network Management brand. Because the new products incorporate the OmniVista 2770 Quarantine Manager software that Alcatel unveiled last month at N+I, customers can easily police their networks and deal with rogue clients by identifying an IP or MAC address or even disabling a LAN switch.

“Is this as easy to operate as an unmanned LAN switch? No. It requires more work. It's more complex than an unmanaged network infrastructure. On the other hand, it's a lot simpler to contain a virus attack than if you didn’t have this sort of tool,” explained Brian Witt, director of product marketing at Alcatel.

In addition, customers can easily integrate the switches into their RADIUS authentication server to assign rights to specific users and track the usage of those services throughout the entire enterprise. Other security features include centralized encryption for 802.11i and user-aware firewalling.

The latest rollout comes as Alcatel continues to struggle like all other telecom equipment firms around the globe. The decline in the fixed-line market has been well documented and still hasn’t shown signs of bottoming out. Alcatel officials though see the possibility of video services rollout by incumbent operators as a ray of light for the optical business.

But analysts like Dulaney say just because Alcatel has an expertise as a global supplier of equipment for telecommunications networks doesn’t make it an expert in networking equipment. As such, Aruba might not be deriving as much value as Alcatel is from the arrangement.

“ Aruba needed a partner like Trapeze has with 3com,” Dulaney explained. “It demonstrates they can appeal to that channel. It also gives them some voice expertise and more presence in Europe. But Alcatel is not as strong as say Nortel was for Trapeze. It’s one of the weaker players in networking and is really a voice play.”

“Would you buy all your networking infrastructure from Alcatel? I wouldn’t think too many would,” he concluded.

Robert Liu is executive editor at TMCnet.  Previously, he was executive editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg.  He can be reached at [email protected].