Juniper Acquires Trapeze For $152 Million

Cisco Umi

Juniper Networks Tuesday announced it would acquire Belden Inc.'s Trapeze Networks for $152 million, continuing the consolidation among networking companies.

The deal will increase Juniper's growing WLAN offerings and deliver Trapeze’s 6,000 customers to Juniper, which noted that Trapeze's WLAN technologies complement its campus, branch switching, routing and security business. The acquisition is the latest in a series of mergers in networking, as vendors take aim at the rapidly growing area and particularly at Cisco Systems, which has long been the segment’s pacesetter.

"Juniper's strong history of technology execution combined with Trapeze’s accomplished team ideally positions the company to deliver end-to-end high-performance networking," said David Yen, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper's Fabric and Switching Technologies unit, in a statement.

Juniper indicated the acquisition -- which it said was "definitive" -- will beef up its offerings in the enterprise market, which is increasingly being driven by wireless applications. Trapeze unveiled a family of 802.11n platforms in July, including provisioning for massive indoor/outdoor networks. Juniper added that its customers will be able to build networks on its existing end-to-end infrastructures in combination with Trapeze’s offerings.

According to Juniper, Trapeze has been awarded 17 patents and has 49 more filings pending, making it the leading IP developer among WLAN providers. Its Smart Mobile WLAN solution, for instance, combines centralized and distributed networking in an example of the "intelligent switching" phenomenon that has been growing rapidly. The architecture facilitates the adoption of 802.11n networks and voice across indoor and outdoor enterprise networks while keeping security and manageability firmly in place.

As for Belden, its president and CEO, John Stroup, said the company will continue to focus on its core markets, "including the nascent industrial networking market." For instance, Belden last week acquired Thomas & Betts primarily for its coaxial cable drop connectors, pole line hardware and other networking gear, for $78 million.

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