April 07, 2006
WHEATON FRANCISCAN HEALTHCARE ENABLES WIRELESS MOBILITY FOR EMPLOYEES AND PATIENTS BY CHOOSING TRAPEZE NETWORKS
PLEASANTON, Calif., April 10, 2006 - Trapeze Networks™, the award-winning provider of the wireless LAN (WLAN) Mobility System™, today announced that it has been chosen by Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare to fulfill its mandate of wirelessly enabling all of the company?s facilities throughout three states. Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, the healthcare arm of Wheaton Franciscan Services, Inc, headquartered in Wheaton, Illinois, is a Catholic, not-for-profit organization with more than 100 health and shelter organizations in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Colorado.
The Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare system, which staffs over 22,000 employees, includes 17 hospital campuses, four long-term care facilities, two home health agencies, 3,563 physicians and 70 clinic sites at which 598 employed physicians practice. It also has joint ventures that include MRI centers, dialysis centers, industrial medicine services, and physician partnerships.
To date, in Wheaton Franciscan's Iowa region, approximately 30 of the company's 100 facilities have been installed with Trapeze equipment, including four MX-400™ switches designed for data center deployment, two MXR-2™ branch office switches, over 150 Trapeze Mobility Point™ radios and RingMaster™, Trapeze’s pre-and post-deployment planning, configuration, and monitoring software tool.
Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare currently supports a mix of wireless data to ensure security, including WPA and WPA2, which is based on the Advanced Encryption Standard and offers the strongest encryption available today.
In this first phase of production in Waterloo, Iowa and the surrounding area, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare is rolling out wireless services to 200 employees who use laptops, tablet PCs and PDAs. Longer term, it will utilize the Trapeze WLAN Mobility System to support voice-over-wireless phones and guest Internet access for patients. Over the next two years, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare estimates that it will deploy over 1,400 Trapeze Mobility Points throughout its campuses in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare did a head-to-head comparison of wireless LAN hardware and software solutions from Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Trapeze Networks. Technology operation officials evaluated wireless range, data throughput, wireless security, ease of configuration, reporting capabilities, overall manageability and value.
“We decided to buy our wireless gear from Trapeze after we did our head-to-head evaluation with other vendors and found Trapeze to have the best management, security and value,” said Larry Griffith, director of technology operations for Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. “So far, Trapeze has exceeded our expectations through ease of deployment, robust management features, and the exceptional level of support we’re receiving from the company.”
About Trapeze Networks
Trapeze Networks delivers the power of business applications and services to the mobile enterprise workforce. The company's wireless LAN Mobility System enhances productivity, introduces new efficiencies and accelerates business response time by delivering secure mobility for roaming users and sophisticated services for both users and IT, all while offering the lowest total cost of ownership of any WLAN infrastructure provider. Trapeze announced a partnership with Motorola (NASDAQ: MOT) in August 2005, a partnership with 3Com Corp. (NASDAQ: COMS) in August 2004, a partnership with both D-Link and Nortel (NYSE/TSX: NT) in March 2005, and a partnership with Enterasys Networks in May 2005. Trapeze has also been the recipient of eleven industry awards, including InfoWorld's Technology of the Year award for the best WLAN solution in recognition of its product and technology strength. Founded in March 2002, Trapeze has raised $72.5 million in venture funding to date and is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, U.S.A. For more information, please visit www.trapezenetworks.com.
