Belden Snags Trapeze - Expansion, Not Consolidation

The acquisition of Trapeze Networks by Belden Corp., quietly announced last Friday, will undoubtedly be reported by some as evidence that the Enterprise Wireless LAN market is consolidating. And, as I track 18 vendors in the space (and there are arguably more than this number), I'm tempted to agree with them. But wait - Belden in fundamentally a wired-LAN company, selling perhaps the world's best wire and cable (I always use Belden cable in enterprise installations, no exceptions). OK, they also resell Extricom equipment, but Trapeze brings them into the big leagues with a robust, competitive, and quite complete WLAN product line. So what's really going on here is more evidence of the importance of unified networking, not a WLAN industry consolidation. The latter will happen eventually; such is always inevitable in IT. But the former is way more important.

Unified in this case refers to a fundamental shift in thinking, away from wired LAN and wireless LAN, and to simply, well, LAN. I've written and spoken widely on this concept for some time now, and I see evidence, like this announcement, that we're getting closer every day. Belden is perhaps best described as a Layer-1 company, so they don't get as much attention from the IT press as they deserve. But it's clear here that they see the opportunity in unified networking, and have moved aggressively to compete for the visibility and market share that I think will result once it becomes obvious that unified networking has great appeal to buyers. And that will happen very soon, again partially driven by this announcement.

This looks to me like a marriage made in heaven, or at least as close as one can get to that delightful, if theoretical, concept. Belden has a huge following, name recognition, a channel, and great wired products. Trapeze has a very competitive wireless LAN system. I think that this acquisition is very clear evidence of the importance of wireless LANs, unified networking, and the very significant growth prospects ahead for both.