Brocade's recently announced plans to buy Ruckus Wireless for $1.2 billion should beef up Brocade's ability to compete in markets like 5G and IoT, while also providing a crucial piece currently lacking from Ruckus's product portfolio.
Ruckus Wireless Chief Commercial Officer Ian Whiting said in an interview with FierceInstaller one of the things his company has had to compete around is the fact that it doesn't have a switch in its portfolio for end-to-end LAN solutions.
"That's been somewhat by design because as an open-networking company, we basically ensure everything we build is compatible and something that can be integrated with any networking vendor's products," Whiting said.
But Whiting said there is certainly a class of customer out there that would prefer to have all the components under one brand and under one support contract.
"As we go forward that's something we'll now be able to deliver," Whiting said, adding that both Ruckus and Brocade channel partners will be able to now build with Brocade's switching portfolio and Ruckus's Wi-Fi portfolio and make integrated products on the technology and go-to-market levels.
That's part of what Whiting said will make the combined company essentially the only pure play networking company in the marketplace, "other than the two big rivals who have many other products and distractions, where'll we be just manically focused on network infrastructure."
Pete Peterson, vice president of global channel sales at Brocade, made similar points about how the tie-up will provide better options for various network deployments.
"Those that are deploying, managing and developing large networks from the data center to the wireless edge, now they have a much richer and potentially much broader set of products and solutions that they'll be able to deploy," Peterson said.
Peterson also said the Ruckus acquisition and merger, which is expected to close by the third quarter of this year, gives Brocade a foundation for what it calls "the new IP."
"A lot of the networking infrastructure that is powering the market today, quite frankly has been built on some fairly aged technology. We think this opportunity to combine Brocade and Ruckus gives us a very strong foundation in building that networking highway of the future," Peterson said.
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