The alliance between Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless announced on Tuesday underscores the importance of Wi-Fi in enterprises, where employees increasingly work and access cloud applications on mobile devices.

Juniper and Ruckus say they’re joining forces to build integrated wired and wireless infrastructures while keeping their technologies open and standards-based. The companies focused on enterprises in announcing the partnership, but they will also integrate technologies for service-provider networks, Ruckus Vice President of Corporate Marketing David Callisch said.

As Wi-Fi gets faster and more workers use laptops and other portable devices, more enterprises see wireless as a real alternative to traditional Ethernet LANs, said Gartner analyst Tim Zimmerman. Some networks based on IEEE 802.11ac theoretically can deliver more speed than Gigabit Ethernet, and the second wave of that technology now emerging will offer more than 6Gbps on the top end.

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