If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: the Meridian exit is the most underrated exit in Portland startup history. And with that info, you also have to recognize that any chance I have to refer to that positive exit, I will. Like today, when it was confirmed that HP was acquiring Aruba for around $3 billion.
What does that have to do with the Meridian deal? Well, Aruba is the company that snapped them up—and the company that has the former Meridian team focused on Beacon technology. And one that was planning to build a sizable regional office here in town.
According to Larry Dignan, it will be a boost to HP:
Aruba, which competes with Ruckus Wireless and Cisco, does give HP’s networking business a shot in the arm. In HP’s most recent quarter, the networking business was hampered by “execution issues” in the U.S. and China. HP built its networking portfolio over time, but the 2010 acquisition of 3Com is what gave it scale.
IDC said Aruba has 11.5 percent of the wireless local area network (WLAN) market, followed by Ruckus at 6.3 percent and HP at 5.8 percent. Cisco has 48.4 percent of the WLAN market. With Aruba, HP would have a better share of the market.
Wait. HP already has a Portland presence. Is this going to derail the Aruba office? Buck up there, camper. The Aruba Portland office is still a thing.
That is, Aruba still intends to beef up its Portland office.
“Aruba is fully committed to continue to develop the Portland site,” said Greg Murphy, vice president of business operations.
Aruba is building out a “showcase” office in the Block 300 building downtown where its neighbors will be IT automation firm Puppet Labs and mobile app maker CrowdCompass. The new office is on track to open in April, Murphy said.
“We have been growing aggressively (in Portland) and hiring is going well,” he said. “We are pleased with the caliber of candidates and have put new groups (in Portland) we hadn’t anticipated.”
So stay tuned. I’m sure there’s a bunch of interesting stuff to come with this latest twist.
