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ADTRAN

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2013 American Business Awards

Company: ADTRAN, Huntsville AL
Entry Submitted By: Connect2 Communications
Company Description: ADTRAN, Inc. is a leading global provider of networking and communications equipment, with a portfolio of more than 1,700 solutions. ADTRAN's products enable voice, data, video and Internet communications across a variety of network infrastructures. ADTRAN solutions are currently in use by service providers, private enterprises, government organizations and millions of individual users worldwide.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Telecommunications - Product

Nomination Title: ADTRAN’s Virtual Wireless LAN (vWLAN®) Solution

Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date.

Enterprises are faced with the challenge of scaling their Wi-Fi network to accommodate bandwidth hungry applications, greater coverage, higher throughput, more users/devices and wider mobility while keeping expenditures to a minimum.

Addressing these challenges is very difficult within hardware controller-based wireless LANs (WLANs). Controllers have inherent complexities and scale limitations. The conventional method of scaling this type of network is to add more controllers and therefore more costly, cumbersome hardware.

ADTRAN's wireless LAN strategy utilizes virtualization to scale and innovate through software - without adding expensive hardware. Virtualization delivers enormous benefits, such as increased performance, outstanding reliability, unsurpassed scalability, infrastructure efficiency and savings in CAPEX/OPEX.

ADTRAN’s virtual WLAN (vWLAN) solution was created from the realization that the same benefits of server virtualization can be brought to Wi-Fi networks. Rather than deploying a hardware controller-based Wi-Fi network, vWLAN virtualizes the centralized control and management functions onto software that runs on a hypervisor (e.g. VMware) or on a virtual appliance. This approach completely eliminates the need for, common constraints of and costs related to physical hardware controllers.

The vWLAN solution is unique for the following reasons:
• Industry’s first/only WLAN solution with…
o Hypervisor-based control & management: Removes 100% of the need, costs and constraints of legacy hardware controllers.
o Control of users on third party access points: No forklift upgrade required. Enables customers to keep their existing network access points intact.
• Greater network capacity: Capacity is based on the total aggregate throughput of all access points combined.
• Higher reliability: By separating control and data plane; control plane failure does not interrupt data flow. High-availability software provides seamless failover with zero packet loss.
• Increased security: Firewall and security policies are enforced at the access point ensuring unwanted traffic never enters the LAN.
• Green IT: Reduce energy usage by 80% by eliminating hardware controllers.

Customer Testimonials:

Paul Swaim, Manager of Network Technology, North Idaho College "A virtually managed WLAN solution was an easy addition to our virtual strategy and was perfectly aligned with our IT goals. It presented a way to further leverage the cost benefits of a virtual infrastructure. We get the best of both worlds: a fast and reliable WLAN that is highly cost effective to scale and manage…We couldn’t imagine making such aggressive expansion plans with our old legacy solution.”

Billy Maus, Network Administrator, William Jessup University "… the vWLAN solution has enabled us to scale our network as the student population and growth of devices on our campus has exploded. Unlike other solutions we have used in the past, the ease of deployment and centralized management of the vWLAN solution has provided benefits in both the operational expense, and reliability of the network resulting in an improved student/faculty user experience…”

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Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

In August 2011, ADTRAN acquired Bluesocket, the first and only provider of WLAN solutions with virtual control/management. Bluesocket's revolutionary virtual WLAN solution (vWLAN) redefined the 802.11n/Wi-Fi industry. Combining ADTRAN's powerful enterprise networks portfolio and Bluesocket's innovative solutionsresulted in the industry's most integrated, carrier-class, seamless wireless/wireline end-to-end voice, data, video and mobility solutions with virtual control.

Mads Lillelund, G.M. of ADTRAN’s Bluesocket Group (formerly Bluesocket’s President/CEO) envisioned a software-only model for wireless LANs. His foresight led to the development of vWLAN, the industry's first WLAN with hypervisor-based control and management.