Aruba Networks Hits Milestone in French Education Market with Deployments at over 100 Schools and Universities
Robust, Easily Deployed Wireless LANs are the Solution of Choice for Institutions Seeking Secure Mobility for Students, Faculty, and Staff
Paris, December 10, 2007 - Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN), a global leader in user-centric networks and secure mobility solutions, today announced that more than 100 of France's leading educational institutions have selected its wireless LAN technology to meet the connectivity and network security needs of their students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Aruba's wireless LANs feature automated set-up and optimization features that do away with the manual surveys and adjustments typical of legacy wireless networks. This makes Aruba's solution ideally suited to the dynamic environments typical of university campuses, where students and staff are highly mobile. Aruba's interoperable architecture supports all standard clients including Centrino, Pentium, and Apple, an essential feature for schools since students typically bring their own laptop computers on campus.
Largely spurred by strong student, faculty, and staff demand, the widespread adoption of wireless technology in French schools has been supported by the French Department of Higher Education and Research through initiatives such as "Micro-Portable Etudiant" through which laptops can be purchased for as little as one Euro a day. According to Department figures, significant results in wireless deployments have already been achieved and more than 7000 access points have already been installed. The Department expects this figure grow quickly since all higher education establishments are slated to be equipped with wireless infrastructure by the end of 2008. Aruba's marked and continued success in the education market is attributable to its ease of deployment and management, client-to-core security, robustness, and scalability, all of which are key evaluation criteria in university deployments.
"We had deployed a first generation wireless LAN solution but its centralized management simply couldn't scale to efficiently support a 250,000 square meter campus spread over 5 sites with 24,000 students and more than 2000 staff," said Didier Siri, head of the network and systems service of the Universite de Provence. "Aruba's centralized architecture was evaluated as a replacement and very quickly became the obvious choice. The ease of configuration, the automatic detection of newly added access points, the flexible centralized management, and the competitive cost were all factors clearly in Aruba's favor. Aruba's identity-based security was also crucial for us because it enables firewall-based user policies to be consistently enforced as students, staff and visitors move freely around campus."
Aruba's user-centric networks securely deliver the enterprise network to users by integrating adaptive WLANs, identity-based security, and application continuity services into a cohesive, high-performance system. By associating security policies with users, instead of ports or hardware, policies can be enforced independently of how or where a user accesses the network. This unique follow-me security capability provides unprecedented mobility for users while ensuring that security is always enforced.
"The decision to deploy a wireless network was driven by overwhelming demand from students and staff, who were not allowed to connect to the wired network with their personal laptops for fear of a security breach," said Sandrine Twardy, network and systems engineer at Toulon University. "A stringent, comprehensive list of requirements was drawn up prior to selection of a wireless solution, focusing primarily on ergonomics, centralized management and obviously strong security functionality. Aruba, which had already been recommended to us by several neighboring universities, came out on top of every criterion. The powerful intrusion detection, user authentication, and policy enforcement functionality were particularly decisive for us. We're so pleased with the solution and the security we achieved that we intend to use the Aruba network to manage our wired network so users will have the same access rights as they enjoy on the wireless network."
"Wireless networking is becoming a mandatory tool in the education sector, and even influences to which schools some students apply," said Pascal Desaint, Aruba's General Manager for France, Mediterranean Europe, and Africa. "Aruba has a long history of supplying advanced wireless networking solutions to prestigious American and European universities - including Dartmouth, Ohio State University, and Yale - and France is no exception. In addition to Toulon University and Universite de Provence, renowned schools such as INSA Lyon, the Cnam, Rouen University, Institut National Polytechnique, and the University of Bordeaux are all Aruba customers. Together with our channel partners we are delighted to have been selected as the primary vendor for so many outstanding French institutions, and look forward to further growth in the education market in collaboration with the French Department of Higher Education and Research."
About Aruba Networks, Inc.
Aruba securely delivers the enterprise network to users, wherever they work or roam, with user-centric networks that significantly expand the reach of traditional port-centric networks. User-centric networks integrate adaptive wireless LANs, identity-based security, and application continuity services into a cohesive, high-performance system that can be easily deployed as an overlay on top of existing network infrastructure. Adaptive wireless LANs deliver high-performance, follow-me connectivity so users are always within reach of mission-critical information. Identity-based security associates access policies with users, not ports, to enable follow-me security that is enforced regardless of access method or location. Application continuity services enable follow-me applications that can be seamlessly accessed across wireless LANs and cellular networks. The cost, convenience, and security benefits of user-centric networks are fundamentally changing how and where we work. Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit www.arubanetworks.com.
Media Contacts
Michael R. Tennefoss
Head of Strategic Marketing
Aruba Networks, Inc.
Phone: +1-408-754-8034
FAX: +1-408-227-4550
E-mail: mtennefoss@arubanetworks.com
Jay Nichols
Sterling Communications, Inc.
+1-415-392-2300
jnichols@sterlingpr.com
