Where have all the WLAN infrastructure vendors gone?

I'm currently attending INTEROP Las Vegas and one trend that I have noticed over the last few years is the declining participation of many WLAN infrastructure vendors. 

In fact, of all the major players in Gartner's Magic Quadrant, the single wireless-only company that I saw exhibiting was Xirrus, which provided the Wireless LAN for the show floor. 

Of course, many of the tech heavy weights like Cisco, HP, Juniper, and Motorola exhibitied, but wireless was only a small portion of a much broader product set they were promoting. 

No Aruba.  No Meru.  No Aerohive, Bluesocket, or Ruckus either. 

Have no fear.  I did find several booths dedicated to products that support enterprise mobility.  One such booth was MetaGeek.  They make stand alone spectrum analyzers.  In the video below, I interviewed MetaGeek's Chief Geek, Ryan Woodings, about the importance of spectrum analysis. 

 

So where have all the WLAN infrastructure vendors gone?  Well, some of these companies have provided panelists for various sessions within the wireless and mobility conference track. 

I also believe it has become more and more popular for companies to host private parties with a targeted list of customers and partners in lieu of exihibiting on the show floor.  I wonder if that's not a side effect caused by how companies are changing the way they market (based on social media)?  Said another way, does it make sense for companies to spend their money marketing to specific individuals versus trying to advertise to the masses? 

Stay tuned as I am going to walk the show floor again on Thursday in search of other intereting wireless and mobility vendors. 

Douglas J. Haider is a Consulting Systems Engineer with Cisco. He hosts a personal blog at WiFiJedi.com, and micro-blogs on Twitter @wifijedi