Colubris Acquires Wi-Fi Technologies Developer Kiwi Networks

Waltham, MA -- Colubris Networks today announced the acquisition of Kiwi Networks (Campbell, CA). Kiwi is an early-stage company developing advanced cellular Wi-Fi technologies and automated radio frequency (RF) planning and control products for use by enterprise and service provider customers.

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.

"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. 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," said Barry Fougere, president and CEO, Colubris Networks. "Enterprise and carriers benefits will include 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 (see related story). 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 CTO at Metawave, leads the engineering team in Colubris West Coast office.

Source: Colubris Networks