Few doubt that Wi-Fi and WiMAX are burgeoning technologies with pots of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow. Firms like start-up Colubris demonstrate the vitality of the industry on an almost daily basis. But, for every new company that pops onto the scene, there are several others bought, sold, traded and merged into an ever-changing competitive landscape. Even early-stage companies like Colubris cannot resist the feeding frenzy.
Just today, WLAN system provider Colubris announced the acquisition of Kiwi Networks based in Campbell, California. Kiwi, too, is an early-stage company albeit one with an interesting edge. Kiwi develops advanced cellular Wi-Fi technologies and automated radio frequency (RF) planning and control products for use by enterprise and service provider customers.
“We acquired Kiwi Networks for its world-class development team, advanced technology and patent portfolio. The problem Kiwi has focused on — enabling unlicensed spectrum to behave deterministically under load — will become increasingly critical over the next several years as Wi-Fi becomes more pervasive in enterprise and carrier networks,” says Barry Fougere, president and CEO, Colubris Networks.
Colubris Multiservice Wireless LAN (WLAN) systems incorporating Kiwi’s technology are expected to ship in the fourth calendar quarter of the year. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The intent, however, is loud and clear.
”Integrating Kiwi’s patent-protected RF management and advanced packet scheduling capabilities into our solutions family enables Colubris to further leapfrog the competition in both the Wi-Fi and WiMAX markets,” says Fougere.
He added that enterprise and carriers are expected to benefit from the improved interference mitigation and reduced network congestion, resulting in a more robust and scalable approach for mobilizing critical business applications and services with high confidence.
The acquisition of Kiwi comes shortly after Colubris Networks announced $15 million in its third institutional round of funding — bringing the total investment in the company to $36 million. The oversubscribed round represented a significant increase in valuation for Colubris and is being used to expand the company’s global sales channels and development activities in the Enterprise WLAN market.
Kiwi s team remains intact and its California headquarters now serves as Colubris west coast sales and development office. Shimon Scherzer, co-founder, president and CEO of Kiwi Networks and former chief technology officer at Metawave, leads the engineering team in Colubris west coast office.
