SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 30, 2014) - Meru Networks® (NASDAQ: MERU), a leader in intelligent Wi-Fi networking, today announced that the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN), has issued Meru the first Certificate of Conformance received by a WLAN vendor through the ONF OpenFlow™ Conformance Testing Program.

"Meru's SDN implementation is unique in using OpenFlow in our mobility controllers to enable third-party control all the way to the access point," said Ajay Malik, senior vice president of engineering and quality assurance at Meru. "This approach gives customers the maximum benefits of SDN, allowing them to combine solutions from multiple vendors to address their specific needs."

ONF members including Meru are collaborating with companies around the world to bring open networking solutions to market and are in the vanguard of innovation in software-defined networking solution development. The ONF Certificate of Conformance gives customers confidence that they are purchasing current technology that accurately implements a particular version of OpenFlow -- the only globally acknowledged specification for SDN.

"Meru is leading the wireless industry in taking a truly open approach to SDN to enable third-party, unified management of wired and wireless networks," said Dr. Bami Bastani, president and CEO at Meru. "The SDN applications we are developing and the work being done by our growing OpenFlow development community will drive rapid proliferation of open standards-based networks where best-of-breed solutions win."

The ONF OpenFlow Conformance Testing Program was launched in July 2013. The Program provides networking vendors with the opportunity to demonstrate compliance with the OpenFlow specification, the first SDN standard and a vital element of an open SDN architecture. Testing of Meru's mobility controllers was conducted by Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs) an independent division of Criterion Networks India Pvt. Ltd.

"ONF is pleased to see the OpenFlow protocol applied in more and more networking scenarios," said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. "We have always believed it represents a broadly applicable technology to simplify the operation of networks of all kinds and to bring agility and customization to their operators. And of course we view the ONF OpenFlow Conformance Testing Program as an important means to build customer confidence in the products and technologies they adopt and deploy."

ONF works with four certified global conformance testing labs: Beijing Internet Institute (BII), Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs) , Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE) at Indiana University and the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) to certify that products meet ONF OpenFlow Conformance Test Specification requirements. Once these are met, the product is awarded an ONF OpenFlow Certificate of Conformance, validating that it is using current technology and validates that the product accurately implements the OpenFlow specification.

A Certificate of Conformance from ONF is the highest level of assurance available in the market today to confirm OpenFlow specification compliance. Vendors with certified products assert their commitment to the OpenFlow specification, benefitting from shortened development cycles, faster product deployment, opportunities for testing protocols and more.

Meru is actively recruiting third-party OpenFlow-based application developers to join its growing developer community. For more information on Meru SDN solutions, visit: http://www.merunetworks.com/products/technology/sdn/index.html 

For more information about the ONF OpenFlow Conformance Program, visit: https://www.opennetworking.org/openflow-conformance.

About ONF
Launched in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo!, the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a growing nonprofit organization with more than 140 members whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of open SDN. ONF promotes open SDN and OpenFlow technologies and standards while fostering a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customersand users. For further details visit the ONF website at: http://www.opennetworking.org.

About Meru Networks
Meru Networks (NASDAQ: MERU) is a leader in intelligent 802.11ac Wi-Fi solutions, delivering uninterrupted user experience for education, healthcare, hospitality and enterprise. The Meru MobileFLEX architecture is designed to enable seamless roaming with traffic separation for critical applications, providing top performance and high capacity in high-density environments. Visit www.merunetworks.com or call (408) 215-5300 for more information.

©2014 Meru Networks. Meru and Meru Networks are registered trademarks of Meru Networks, Inc. in the United States. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.