Trapeze, Nortel Team for WLAN Expansion

The deal will allow Nortel to improve upon, rebrand, and resell Trapeze's entire WLAN portfolio, said Bruce Van Nice, vice president of marketing at Trapeze, Pleasanton, Calif.

Joint development of new technologies, and the embedding of Trapeze's WLAN tools into Nortel communications platforms are also part of the new partnership, said Van Nice.

While the partnership expands the market for Trapeze WLAN technology by way of Nortel's worldwide direct and indirect sales channels, the planned integration of many of the two vendors' tools sets the stage for a further blurring of the line between wired and wireless networks, said Van Nice.

"This is where wireless and wireline integration will come from," said Van Nice. "We are embedding our technology into some of [Nortel's] platforms to give wireless capabilities to things like remote access, switching and security."

Nortel plans to add its own "special sauce" to the Trapeze product line and then offer the jointly developed products under its own name. The first jointly developed offering, dubbed the WLAN 2300 product family, will debut in the May/June time frame.

Over time, Nortel plans to integrate its VPN technology into the wireless platform and also to integrate the wireless technology into its wired network switches, said Atul Bhatnager, vice president and general manager of enterprise data networking at Nortel, Brampton, Ontario.

The jointly developed products will expand the scalability of Nortel's wireless offerings both up and down, from tens to tens of thousands of users, Bhatnager said. Its current lineup scales from about 100 to several thousand users, he said.

The new product family will include an 802.11a/b/g access point, five wireless switch models and WLAN management software. Pricing has not yet been established. The two companies have been working on joint development efforts since January, Bhatnager said.

Nortel will also continue to support its existing WLAN portfolio, he said.

Van Nice said VARs currently reselling Trapeze products should not be concerned about channel conflict created by the appearance of Nortel salespeople hocking souped-up Trapeze technology branded as Nortel.

"Today, the majority of our business is through the channel. We sell very little direct. So we structured this deal so it's channel-neutral," said Van Nice. "Sales will go through the channel based on the need for a particular service or expertise. There is no economic advantage for any party to sell either direct or indirect. We structured it so the discount levels are the same. So the channel will have some options. They may work with us, or have existing relationships with Nortel."

Van Nice added that Trapeze also plans to expand its market push from its traditional enterprise focus down into the SMB space, an effort that will be aided by the recent deal with D-Link Systems.