WLAN takes a turn

Aruba's acquisition of Network Chemistry's wireless overlay technology could reverberate throughout the WLAN industry if other vendors follow suit, reports eWeek.

While Aruba Networks' purchase of Network Chemistry's wireless intrusion prevention intellectual property in late July does not necessarily herald a surge of acquisitions among enterprise wireless LAN vendors, the wireless market is well-positioned for the largest infrastructure vendors to make their own plays, if Aruba's move quickly shows benefits.

However, Aruba's acquisition should cause significant consternation among smaller wireless infrastructure vendors that rely on Network Chemistry's technology for wireless security, logging and analysis, as this move - and the possibility of similar moves down the road - could easily accelerate consolidation in the enterprise wireless market.

As the link is forged between services-oriented architecture and business process management (BPM), vendors are seeking ways to expand their tool offerings to reach from high level planning and modelling to application development, reports SearchWebServices.

The drive to provide more comprehensive tools was behind this week's acquisition of Proforma, an enterprise architecture tool vendor, by Metastorm, which is moving to expand beyond its BPM tool focus, the company and analysts say. It is also seen as the motivation for IBM's recent acquisition of Telelogic.

This is part of a larger industry trend, said Bradley Shimmin, principal analyst of application infrastructure at Current Analysis, as vendors seek to ways to market products in the enterprise architecture space.

For those hankering to run Windows programs on a Mac, without having to leave the comfort of the Mac OS world, VMWare believes it has the answer, called "Fusion", according to AHN.

The Fusion software, released on Monday, allows Mac users to run Windows XP, Windows Vista, Solaris or Linux within OS X. The virtualisation process enables Mac devotees to launch Windows programs and files from their desktop.

The software retails for $79.99, and is available for purchase online or via download. Pat Lee, VMWare senior product manager for Mac products, says the software offers a feature which lets users minimise Windows programs to their dock, and utilise another which allows them to alternate between Windows and Mac programs.