LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — (Marketwired) — 09/03/13 — Meru Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: MERU), a leader in Wi-Fi networking, has announced that it has been chosen by more than 2,000 colleges, universities, primary and secondary schools in the UK and Ireland in the past 18 months. The institutions are deploying Meru Education-grade (MEG) Wi-Fi networks to address sharply rising device densities, “always-on” students and faculty, and accompanying increases in network traffic.
Meru, which recently launched its new AP832 access point to support the next-generation 802.11ac standard, has also seen an increase in legacy competitive Wi-Fi technology being ripped out of classrooms, often due to poor network performance or redundant technology, and replaced by Meru solutions.
“Wireless technology in schools has become integral to creating a personalised learning environment,” said Mark Howell, area director for UK and Ireland at Meru. “But while this increase in demand for Wi-Fi to support an ever-growing number of devices is good news, it-s easy to think that a low cost solution can deliver the performance and scalability required. Mobile technology is only as good as the network supporting it, and as you add more devices, your network needs to be able to grow and deliver the same performance today, tomorrow and in five years- time.”
Meru-s MEG solution is designed to solve colleges- and universities- BYOD issues and support their uninterrupted learning applications. MEG starts with three simple steps:
1. Onboard quickly with BYOD provisioning and secure wireless access mapped to IT policies.
2. Connect all BYOD devices reliably anywhere on campus.
3. Learn by deploying validated learning and teaching applications over the MEG wireless platform.
Meru counts more than 2,750 primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities across the UK and Ireland among its customers. These include Essa Academy in Bolton, Longfield Academy and the Education Network in Northern Ireland, where Meru and partner Capita are delivering Wi-Fi to more than 350,000 teachers and pupils in more than 1,200 schools. West Midlands-based Shelfield Community Academy recently replaced its entire Cisco network with Meru to support more than 1,000 Android mobile devices. Chiswick School also replaced Cisco with Meru this year.
Essa Academy, which moved quickly towards personalised learning, has more than 2,000 mobile devices running over a Meru network. “One of the key aspects of the hardware was to make sure we had a system that was robust and that covered the academy completely,” said Abdul Chohan, director at Essa. “We have student mobile devices, portable devices and iPads being used by teachers in classrooms — this means the wireless network has to be robust, accessible and seamless. Meru allows for a complete 21st century learning experience for all of our students and staff.”
Additional information about the Meru MEG solution is available here:
A video case study on Essa Academy and its work with Meru is available here: .
A report published by (the British Educational Suppliers Association) in May 2013, and titled, “Tablets and Apps in Schools 2013,” , shows that the number of tablets in England-s schools is expected to reach 260,000 by the end of this year, up from 100,000 in 2012, and 600,000 by 2015. Nearly a third of all students will have access to a tablet by 2020. The report also predicts that 40% of “ICT learning time” will be covered by educational apps by 2020.
According to an research report titled, “Tablets Changing the Education Sector in the United States, Major Momentum Underway” doc # 241239, May 2013, schools are contributing to the upswing in the sales of tablet computers, with their numbers in classrooms more than doubling in the US in the past year.
Meru Networks (NASDAQ: MERU) is a market leader in the development of mobile access and virtualized Wi-Fi solutions. Meru-s Mobile wireless architecture addresses the ever-growing need for higher bandwidth and higher client densities. The Meru Identity Manager solution greatly simplifies secure device onboarding and the company-s unique Context-aware Application Layers (CALs) enable dedicated channel assignments for specific applications, devices and usage scenarios. Meru customers include Fortune 500 businesses as well as leaders in education, healthcare and hospitality. Founded in 2002, Meru is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Japan. Visit or call (408) 215-5300 for more information.
© 2013 Meru Networks, Inc. Meru Networks and Meru are registered trademarks of Meru Networks, Inc. in the United States. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
Amanda Hassall
Cobra Public Relations
+44 (0)1628 822741/+44 (0)7855 359889
Wilson Craig
Director of Public Relations
Meru Networks
+1 408 516 6182
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