SUNNYVALE, Calif. – May 27, 2015 – Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global leader in high-performance cyber security solutions, and Meru Networks (NASDAQ:MERU), a leader in intelligent Wi-Fi networking, today announced a definitive agreement for Fortinet to acquire Meru. The acquisition is synergistic with Fortinet’s secure wireless vision and enterprise growth focus, broadens the company’s solutions portfolio, and expands its opportunity to uniquely address the $5B global enterprise Wi-Fi market with integrated and intelligent secure wireless solutions. Leading the trend to provide broad security for wired and wireless networks and devices, Fortinet also announced today a new FortiGuard mobile security subscription service to protect mobile devices and applications across the enterprise.
Easy and efficient deployment, flexibility and scalability are factors that favor Wi-Fi based solutions. Along with these factors, the bring your own device (BYOD) concept has brought the power of convenient connectivity and efficiency to end-users who have come to expect secure access to their enterprise network, regardless of location. All of this has driven widespread adoption of Wi-Fi by enterprises of every size. However, this expansion of the network to unknown and untrusted mobile devices creates significant IT security risks amidst the most dangerous cyber threat environment enterprises have ever experienced. Fortinet’s innovative convergence of security and wireless is critical and creates value for customers by broadening an integrated, secure network fabric and enabling protection of transmitted information, while allowing efficient management of the network and devices.
Fortinet’s proven solutions in secure Wi-Fi markets, with its FortiAP secure wireless access points and FortiWiFi integrated security appliances for enterprise branch offices and small businesses have been among the fastest growing products in the company’s “advanced technologies” portfolio. The addition of Meru’s intelligent Wi-Fi solutions to the Fortinet portfolio extends the delivery of a secure, uninterrupted user experience – anytime anywhere – providing peak performance in environments requiring high capacity load and a high-density of wireless users, such as enterprise, education, healthcare, and hospitality.
Meru’s broad solution set includes:
• Access points that deliver wireless connectivity to support data, voice, and video applications with superior performance, low latency and reliability.
• Controllers to optimize wireless traffic across access points and client devices meeting mission-critical enterprise demands for wireless connectivity.
• SDN enabled Wi-Fi system software that seamlessly manages and secures wired and wireless LANs, as well as efficiently provisions Wi-Fi enabled end-user devices.
• Cloud and virtual wireless controllers and appliances that provide unprecedented choice and flexibility in deploying and scaling wireless infrastructure, whether through a data center or private cloud environment.
The acquisition of Meru Networks maps to our overall security vision of combining strong network security with ubiquitous connectivity,” said Ken Xie, founder, chairman and CEO of Fortinet. “We expect this to accelerate our innovation through the delivery of new solutions and services to help enterprises of all sizes deploy, manage and secure wired and wireless networks in a mobile era. We believe the extension of our market-leading end-to-end security platform will increase our growth opportunities and benefit our customers and partners globally.”
In a separate press release today, Fortinet announced the launch of a new FortiGuard Mobile Security subscription service. Deployable on its industry-leading FortiGate integrated security appliances, this new service is designed to protect mobile devices across the enterprise, particularly in BYOD scenarios. Synergistic with the Meru acquisition, the FortiGuard Mobile Security subscription services strengthen Fortinet’s solutions platform and reinforce its commitment to protecting enterprise customers’ critical assets in both wired and wireless environments.
The acquisition of Meru Networks adds an experienced research and engineering team to help accelerate Fortinet’s strategy to secure and manage wired and wireless devices together at any entry point to the network.
In addition, Meru’s portfolio of more than 33 awarded patents and 35 pending patents bolsters Fortinet’s more than 210 issued and allowed patents worldwide, and over 165 pending patent applications, and represent innovation that will benefit the more than 14,000 Meru customers and 210,000 Fortinet customers worldwide.
The combination of Fortinet and Meru is expected to strengthen our position in the overall enterprise wireless market, addressing the requirements of CIOs to provide secure, uninterrupted connectivity for their highly mobile end-users,” said Dr. Bami Bastani, president and CEO of Meru Networks. “Meru’s technology differentiation, and its position as the only ONF-certified SDN wireless solution, along with Fortinet’s core, edge and access security solutions, will provide a broader solutions portfolio for our sales teams and channel partners.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Fortinet will pay $1.63 per Meru share in cash, an equity value of approximately $44 million for the transaction.
The acquisition is expected to close during the third quarter of calendar year 2015, subject to customary closing conditions. Fortinet expects the transaction to have no material impact on billings, revenue, operating margins or non-GAAP profitability for the full year 2015. Once the transaction closes, Fortinet will include Meru in its guidance going forward and provide additional financial details in its second quarter 2015 financial results announcement. Prior to the close, Fortinet and Meru will continue to operate as separate companies.
Meru was founded in 2002 and completed its initial public offering in 2010. The company is based in Sunnyvale, CA, and has more than 300 employees worldwide. For the full year ended December, 2014, Meru reported revenue of $90.9 million.
