Airespace Cracks Europe
The move marks the startup’s first stab at the European enterprise wireless LAN market. Earlier this year the company struck a high-profile OEM partnership deal with NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY; Tokyo: 6701) and announced a number of smaller contract wins in Korea (see Airespace Takes Off and Airespace Expands Into Korea).
The announcement follows a busy few months for the U.S. startup. The vendor secured a $22 million cash injection back in July and last month made its first major move into the emerging voice-over-wireless-LAN market (see Airespace Lands Another $22M and Airespace Talks Up VOIP).
— Justin Springham, Senior Editor, Europe, Unstrung
The other disadvantage for Cisco is that their customers want leverage to keep them honest and squeeze them on price, so they seem to be building overlay networks on top of their Cisco networks, for WiFi. Bad news for Cisco. Good news for the startups.