11/5/08 - Enterasys and Siemens Enterprise Communications nnounced that the company was positioned in the visionaries quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Wireless LAN Infrastructure 2008 report (Gartner ID Number G00163188).

According to the report, "A vendor in the Visionaries quadrant demonstrates an ability to increase features in its offering to provide a unique and differentiated approach to the market. A visionary will have innovated in one or more of the key areas of WLAN technologies (convergence, security, management or operational efficiency)."

"Differences in WLAN architecture, enhanced security and management features separate the offerings from each vendor," the report stated. Moreover, "Although WLAN vendors continue to innovate more rapidly on the technology front, the traditional wired infrastructure vendors are marketing increasingly compelling arguments for combined application services such as management of wired and wireless networks."

Published 26 November 2008, the Gartner report stated, "While all vendors continue to support basic end-user connectivity, additional requirements for security, management, voice capabilities, and integration with management or security appliances continue to drive vendor selections."

"We are pleased by our positioning in Gartner's Magic Quadrant and believe that this is confirmation that our convergence, security, management and operational efficiency are fundamental strengths," said Chris Crowell, Enterasys EVP Operations and CTO. "Capital savings can result from competing the combined wired and wireless business between multiple vendors in a challenging economic environment. Our integrated switching, management software, and security across wired and wireless networks enable IT to complete their projects on-time within the constraints of a reduced budget."

Gartner evaluated a vendor's ability to execute using the criteria of products, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, market responsiveness and track record, marketing execution, customer experience and other criteria. A vendor's completeness of vision was evaluated based on market understanding, marketing strategy, product strategy, business model, innovation and other criteria.

Enterasys and Siemens believe tightly integrated wireless offerings help customers efficiently deploy unified communications that are mobile and secure. The standards-based, open-architecture solutions are backed by industry-leading global support and services from both Enterasys and Siemens. The Open Communications approach means that customers can leverage existing investments and avoid forklift upgrades -- making wireless mobility more practical, achievable and cost-effective.

Convergence

The Enterasys/Siemens offering uniquely enables voice and HD video communications across the WLAN. Mobile clients for unified communications (UC) and fixed mobile convergence (FMC) extend corporate telephony features to mobile users on both WLAN and cellular networks via RIM BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, and Windows Mobile devices with Apple iPhone support coming soon.

The Enterasys and Siemens full suite of integrated wired and wireless security features include embedded wireless intrusion prevention and location-based services. When deployed in conjunction with the Enterasys Dragon® intrusion prevention system (IPS) and Enterasys network access control (NAC), identity-based policy privileges are unified across the wired and wireless infrastructure to deliver role-based access control -- regardless of connectivity method.

New management software integration between Enterasys and Siemens provides end-to-end visibility of wireless access points, controllers and wireless clients. The integration between Enterasys and Siemens products delivers improved network management efficiency and wired/wireless infrastructure topology mapping and visibility for network administrators.

Customers deploying Enterasys and Siemens wired and wireless networks have validated that the technology requires less money, people and time resources to meet business needs for voice, video and data communications. Unlike competitors, the embedded intelligence and security of the Enterasys network automates move/add/change reconfiguration without requiring a call to the help desk or manual network operations involvement. Business users gain mobile access to their voice, video or data content from any device, anywhere -- while embedded security ensures only the right users have access to the right information from the right place at the right time.

A new C20N wireless controller network expansion module (NEM) integrates wireless switching into the Enterasys Matrix® N-Series LAN switches without occupying any additional slots in the chassis. The C20N expands the current C20, C2400C and C2400E controllers for office, campus and enterprise deployments to deliver unified and/or overlay WiFi connectivity.

A wide range of indoor and outdoor intelligent, enterprise-class access points (APs) provide reliable coverage while optimizing traffic flow for each application with specific capabilities for healthcare and manufacturing industries.

Unique plug and play AP configuration and highly efficient power over Ethernet (PoE) technologies dramatically simplify network deployment and avoid infrastructure upgrade costs by enabling a dual-band 3x3 MIMO 802.11n access point to be powered by a standard IEEE 802.3af PoE port found on many deployed LAN switches.

Keywords: wireless lan infrastructure, gartner magic quadrant, gartner report, vendor selections, voice capabilities, infrastructure vendors, security appliances, operational efficiency, fundamental strengths, enterprise communications, technology front, evp, MIMO