Aruba Networks
Type	Public (NASDAQ: ARUN)
Industry	Computer networking
Founded	Sunnyvale, California, USA(2002)
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, CA
Key people	Dominic Orr, President and CEO Keerti Melkote, Founder & CTO
Revenue	US$267M (FY 2010)
Operating income	US$-32.6M (FY 2010)
Net income	US$-34.0M (FY 2010)
Total assets	US$251M (FY 2010)
Total equity	US$151M (FY 2010)
Employees	1200 (2012)
Website	http://www.arubanetworks.com

Aruba Networks, Inc. is a networking vendor selling enterprise wireless LAN and edge access networking equipment. The company has over 1200 employees and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. Aruba's core products are access points (APs), mobility controllers, and network management software through their Airwave Management Platform product.

 

According to the Dell'Oro Report published in Q408, Aruba ranked #2 in market share in the wireless LAN market.
 

In May 2009, the company introduced the Virtual Branch Network (VBN) family of products targeting branch offices and remote locations.

 

Corporate history

Aruba was founded in 2002 by Keerti Melkote and Pankaj Manglik. The company was venture backed by Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners. In 2005, it entered into an agreement to provide OEM equipment to Alcatel-Lucent. Aruba went public in March 2007. It acquired the wireless security business of Network Chemistry later that year. In 2008 it purchased AirWave Wireless, a vendor of wireless network management software.

 

Hardware

Aruba offers Wi-Fi-branded products such as access points, wireless controllers and software. Aruba sells products under their own brandname and as OEM products from other vendors, such as the Dell PowerConnect W-series products.

 

Access Points

Wireless access points from Aruba are targeted at the corporate market and support the IEEE 802.11n standard. Some APs can use external antennas both for improved indoor-coverage or outdoor usage. One model AP is weather-proof to be used with up to 4 external antennas. All Aruba access points offer ARM: Adaptive Radio Management, integrated security features, integrated spectrum analysis and support mesh features for campus-wide deployment.

 

Instant Access Points

The Aruba Instant solution uses a dynamically-elected access point to distribute a network over the air. There are four AP series and two Remote Access Point series that offer: Adaptive Radio Management™ (ARM) technology, built-in security features, easy set-up and software updating, and no deployment limits.

 

Mesh Routers

Aruba offers 4 models of mesh-router. These mesh-routers are access-points with integrated OSI layer 3 routing. Most models are to be used with external antennas and designed for outdoor use and optimized to be used for wireless security cameras. 

 

Remote Access Points

For small branches or working from home Aruba offers RAPs: Remote Access Points that communicate with Aruba's Mobility Controller. There are several RAPs: small single-radio AP's, a wired-only device and multi-user wired/wireless models. 

 

Mobility Access Switches

The S2500 and S3500 Mobility Access switches are 24 or 48 port Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches for use with Access Points. Management can be done via a dedicated out of band 10/100/1000 Mbit/s Ethernet port. 

 

Mobility Controllers

Mobility controllers are used for a central organization-wide management of all access-points and users. For smaller environments APs with built-in controllers are available for up to 512 users. For larger organisations Aruba offers the 6000 series for up to 20 Gbit/s total bandwidth or the 7200 series with a maximum of 32,768 users. The controllers offer access authentication, managed encryption, radio-spectrum analysis and firewall-features.

 

Antennas

Some Aruba access-points can use external antennas. A wide range of indoor and outdoor antennas are available, supporting different frequency-ranges, directional and omni-directional 

 

Software

Aruba has software-products for use with their hardware. Aruba's own operating system runs on all Aruba access-points and mobility controllers.

 

ArubaOS

ArubaOS runs on the Mobility Controllers. As additional components RFProtect + WIP and a Policy Enforcement Firewall are available.

 

Access management

Unknown devices, that cannot authenticate to the network, can be given temporary access via Amigopod. It offers a self-service guest-registration web portal giving a visitor credentials to connect to the network. Via the software authorized (non-IT) staff can then allow this visitor to get access to the network or only to internet or parts of the LAN.

 

Network management

AirWave is Aruba's network management platform. It includes three components to deliver the core capabilities for managing a network: operations management with AirWave Management Platform (AMP), visualization and location tracking with VisualRF, and rogue and intrusion detection with RAPIDS, AirWave's Rogue AP Detection Software. AirWave is a multi-vendor multi-architecture tool. It supports wired and wireless infrastructure from manufacturers such as Aruba, Cisco, Motorola/Symbol, and others.

 

Other software

Aruba offers other applications such as an outdoor RF planner and mesh-config for configuration of the mesh routers.

 

Acquisitions

On 10 May 2010, Aruba Networks confirmed it would acquire wireless mesh startup Azalea Networks. for $27 million in stock and up to $13.5 million in cash over the next two years. The acquisition will give Aruba another avenue for channel partners deploying advanced wireless mesh networks.