Colubris Partners with Juniper

Colubris Networks of Waltham, Mass., is entering into a “joint development and joint marketing” partnership with Juniper Networks (Quote, Company Info) of Sunnyvale, Calif., a company primarily known as a backbone equipment provider for service providers.

Last year, Colubris entered a similar deal with French telecom equipment provider Alcatel (Quote, Company Info). Then, earlier this year, Juniper itself announced it was releasing a Service Deployment System for Public Wireless Local Area Networks (PWLAN), based on its E-Series Platform, which includes their SDX-300 Service Deployment System, a move that allowed ISP using Juniper equipment to go straight from their Internet backbone to the WLAN. The question was, what WLAN equipment would they use?

Now Colubris will be providing the WLAN technology to help get those big carrier ISPs with Juniper equipment into the Wi-Fi side immediately.

“A lot of smaller ISPs are popping up and creating hotspots in North America and Europe, but not many big carriers have stepped up,” says Jim Ciociolo, vice president of Carrier Sales and Business Development at Colubris. “Over the last three to six months though, we’re seeing interest from the large fixed line operators.” To hit that market, Colubris went after a partnership with Juniper, already a major player in fixed-line DSL.

Ciociolo says their solution is an end-to-end platform built around Junipers platform using Colubris CN3000 units on the network edge. They were modified so they can instantly interface via broadband connection to the Juniper router (the SDX-300).

“We’re a compliment to what they have in the core of the network,” say Ciociolo.

He says those with Juniper equipment already installed go on to market right now to provide Wi-Fi at hotspots or for enterprise customers — coffee shop sized WISPs need not apply.

The gist of their joint PWLAN solution is that using the intelligent Colubris products on the network edge — in the hotspot or enterprise office — while the carrier centrally manages things provides more features than using “dumb” or “thin” access points that can’t handle things like security and spread

The deal is not exclusive for either company, but Colubris is the first vendor of this sort Juniper has signed on with. Ciociolo says it compliments the company’s existing Alcatel partnership, as Alcatel is often times involved in opportunities as a provider of back-end solutions that both Juniper and Colubris can take advantage of.

Carl Blume, director of product marketing at Colubris says that with “the variety of business models out there — prepaid, post-paid, time of service, complimentary services like in McDonalds — you’ve got to have a flexible, intelligent access point that can deal with all. The carrier may want them all simultaneously.”

Want to learn more about Colubris and its partners?

The company will exhibiting in booth 824 on the show floor and the company CTO, Pierre Trudeau, will be speaking on the panel,
“What is the Best Hotspot WLAN Architecture?”