Sunday, April 17, 2005

Colubris Unveils Wireless/Wireline Unified Service Architecture

Colubris unveiled its next-generation Unified Services Network (USN) architecture for bringing together wireless and wired network infrastructures of enterprises and service providers. The goal is to provide centralized management and control of voice, data and video services over a single wireless/wired infrastructure.


The first phase of the Colubris USN is the creation of a distributed WLAN/LAN switching architecture with centralized management and control. The second phase of the Colubris USN will be the unification of WLAN/LAN traffic and applications onto a single edge switching platform for new switch installs and upgrades.


The Colubris USN strategy will be supported by the release of two new and complementary products to drive enterprise consolidation of wireless and wired networks -- the MultiService Controller and the Unified Edge Switch -- to be delivered over the next 18 months.





The MultiService Controller product, working in tandem with an Ethernet switch in legacy networks, will provide customers with a distributed WLAN/LAN switching architecture. The Colubris MultiService Controllers provide a distributed switching architecture with centralized management and control. The company said it would support a 10x greater scalability than current WLAN switch solutions, while leveraging commercial AP chips for reduced costs. It will also support a migration to 802.11n standards. In 2006, the product roadmap calls for a unified LAN/WLAN switch based on new commercial switching silicon, with all ports accepting either APs or wired Ethernet clients.


In the enterprise market, Colubris has gained customer traction in a number of vertical markets, such as hospitality (Best Western), Transportation (Boeing), retail, universities, etc. Colubris has a number of strategic industry partners, including Juniper, Alcatel, ARRIS, Miltope and others.
http://www.colubris.com

  • In March 2005, Colubris secured $15 million in its third institutional round of funding for its WLAN systems. Colubris said it now has over 1,000 customers and 60,000 WLAN devices deployed worldwide and that it holds leading market share positions in the WLAN carrier, hospitality, transportation and retail segments. New investors DCM - Doll Capital Management and the Telecommunications Development Fund participated in the round. DCM led the oversubscribed round which also included existing investors: Prism Venture Partners, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds and GrandBanks Capital and The Business Development Bank of Canada. Dixon Doll, founder and managing general partner, DCM was appointed to Colubris' board of directors. The latest funding brings the total investment in Colubris to $36 million.