Microsoft picks Aruba for next-generation WLAN

IDG News Service - Microsoft has chosen Aruba Networks Inc. to upgrade its global wireless LAN.
Microsoft will replace more than 5,000 of Cisco Systems Inc.'s Aironet access points worldwide with Aruba's thin access points and WLAN switches. The deal also represents a setback for Cisco's pricey acquisition of Aruba's arch rival, Airespace Inc.
Besides being an important win for Aruba, the deal will be seen as a blue chip stamp of approval on the use of WLAN switches and thin access points for large-scale WLAN deployments. Aruba executives, including CEO Don LeBeau, a former Cisco honcho, served up ice cream and toppings to employees after announcing the news at the company's Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters.
LeBeau said that for now, Microsoft's plan is simply to replace its existing network with Aruba's technology -- not to expand the wireless infrastructure. Aruba got the word that it had been chosen for the contract in mid-May, after six months of head-to-head evaluations by Microsoft's IT staff.
Microsoft has started doing an initial deployment at one building in order to develop a cookie-cutter approach for rolling out the new network, according to LeBeau. But the technology testing process is over. "They already made sure it works," he said. "That's what all the testing was about."
Neither Aruba nor Microsoft released information on the value of the contract or the total cost of the deployment. According to Aruba, the WLAN will cover 277 buildings in 60 countries and will support 25,000 concurrent users and an estimated 100,000 wireless-equipped devices.
Acting on a 1999 mandate from Chairman Bill Gates, Microsoft's IT group was one of the first, besides Cisco itself, to deploy a WLAN on such a massive scale. Lacking centralized management, security and even a power-over-Ethernet standard, Microsoft was forced to create from scratch many of the features taken for granted today in state-of-the-art WLANs.
Microsoft's request for proposals on the network upgrade drew bids from nearly every vendor in the industry.
According to Aruba executives, Microsoft put all the vendors through the wringer with an extensive competitive benchmark tests. The tests focused on a wide range of enterprise wireless issues: scaling, roaming between access points, user performance and manageability. Security was the focus of a second battery of tests.
Microsoft was looking for vulnerabilities in two categories, LeBeau said. One category was "bugs" or flaws that could be addressed by writing some new code. The second category was vulnerabilities or features inherent in a vendor's product architecture and therefore not easily changed. LeBeau pointed to Aruba's capacity to