Fortinet agreed to acquire Meru Networks for approximately $44 million in cash ($1.63 per Meru share).
Meru, which was founded in 2002 and completed its initial public offering in 2010, specializes in enterprise 802.11ac Wi-Fi solutions based on an open-standards-based architecture that is designed to enable unified management of wired and wireless networks. Its end-to-end application QoS enables enforceable service-level agreements. The company is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has more than 300 employees worldwide. For the full year ended December, 2014, Meru reported revenue of $90.9 million. Meru’s portfolio includes:
- Access points that deliver wireless connectivity to support data, voice, and video applications with superior performance, low latency and reliability.
- Controllers to optimize wireless traffic across access points and client devices meeting mission-critical enterprise demands for wireless connectivity.
- SDN enabled Wi-Fi system software that seamlessly manages and secures wired and wireless LANs, as well as efficiently provisions Wi-Fi enabled end-user devices.
- Cloud and virtual wireless controllers and appliances that provide unprecedented choice and flexibility in deploying and scaling wireless infrastructure, whether through a data center or private cloud environment.
Fortinet said the acquisition is synergistic with its secure wireless vision and enterprise growth focus, enabling it to address the $5B global enterprise Wi-Fi market with integrated and intelligent secure wireless solutions. Fortinet’s FortiAP secure wireless access points and FortiWiFi integrated security appliances for enterprise branch offices and small businesses have been among the fastest growing products in the company’s “advanced technologies” portfolio. The addition of Meru’s intelligent Wi-Fi solutions to the Fortinet portfolio extends the delivery of a secure, uninterrupted user experience – anytime anywhere – providing peak performance in environments requiring high capacity load and a high-density of wireless users, such as enterprise, education, healthcare, and hospitality.
“The acquisition of Meru Networks maps to our overall security vision of combining strong network security with ubiquitous connectivity,” said Ken Xie, founder, chairman and CEO of Fortinet. “We expect this to accelerate our innovation through the delivery of new solutions and services to help enterprises of all sizes deploy, manage and secure wired and wireless networks in a mobile era. We believe the extension of our market-leading end-to-end security platform will increase our growth opportunities and benefit our customers and partners globally.”