Ruckus is dropping the “wireless” from its name and adding Brocade’s ICX wired switching portfolio to its lineup to offer a complete line of access infrastructure.
“The expansion of Ruckus to include both wired and wireless products is a tremendous opportunity for us to carry forward the outstanding ICX product line and technology innovation we have gained as part of Brocade,” Ruckus COO Dan Rabinovitsj comments. “The combination of the product lines mean we can offer our partners a comprehensive set of access infrastructure and meet customers’ networking needs beyond simply wireless, without sacrificing performance. The multi-gig solution sets the tone for the type of innovation to come.”
The company indicates in a press release on Tuesday it’s taking aim at worldwide enterprise, hospitality, service provider, government, and small-and-medium business (SMB) customers with a solution lineup that’s said to optimize end-user experience, simplify network set-up and management for IT managers, and to give business leaders the ability to deliver connectivity for their employees, guests, and customers. That includes a new multi-gigabit 802.11ac Wave 2 solution in the combination of the ICX 7150 Z-Series switch and Ruckus’ R720 access point. The pair can reportedly be dropped into existing CAT 5e cabling infrastructure to increase performance and alleviate problems associated with increasing device densities and bandwidth-eating applications.
Ruckus’ portfolio also includes Cloudpath Enrollment System software, an infrastructure agnostic security and policy management platform that enables organizations to establish secure, policy-based access for all wired and wireless devices.
The move comes a little more than a year since Brocade announced a $1.2 billion deal to buy Ruckus Wireless in April 2016. Earlier this year, however, Arris announced it struck a deal with Broadcom to acquire Brocade’s Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch businesses for $800 million. The latter is contingent on Broadcom closing its acquisition of Brocade, but Arris said the move to pick up Ruckus and the ICX business will extend its offerings in converged wired and wireless networking technologies beyond the home into the education, public venue, enterprise, hospitality, and MDU segments. Arris also laid out plans to establish a dedicated business unit within the company focused on wireless networking and wired switching technology, headed up by Rabinovitsj.
International Data Corporation Senior Research Analyst Nolan Greene says this move is part of that roadmap.
“The announcement that Ruckus will expand its solution set by fully incorporating wired Ethernet switching into its portfolio makes absolute sense and was expected as part of the acquisition announcement from ARRIS earlier this year,” Green observes. “With this new multi-gig solution, Ruckus is formally expressing its intent to be a dominant player in the network access infrastructure market for its target segments—education, hospitality, service provider, government, and SMB.”
