By Dan Rabinovitsj, President, Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company
Today we finalized the ARRIS acquisition of the Ruckus business! Our team is jubilant, relieved and ready to hit the ground running. I want to thank all of our partners, customers and employees for their loyalty, perseverance and passion throughout the past year as we found our way to our new home. Now that we are here at both the finish line and the starting gate, I want to provide more details about how our business fits into ARRIS and also share my thoughts on why the combination with ARRIS offers a compelling path forward for our business.
Our updated brand name is “Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company.” This reflects the expansion of our portfolio to include not only industry-leading wireless products, but also the integration of the high-performance ICX switching family to our overall portfolio. Internally, we will be called the Enterprise Networks business segment of ARRIS. This is important to understand because we will operate as a business unit with its own engineering, sales and marketing resources focused on the Enterprise market. This set-up will minimize integration time and ensure continuity for our partners and customers.
However, please don’t construe the independence of our business unit as the creation of an island. The real value of integration with ARRIS will be to take advantage of our combined and complementary strengths:
1. Continuity of user experience across all verticals and contexts. We see some of the most exciting innovation in networking starting in the residential market. The adoption of voice control, physical security, IoT, high density mesh and application visibility has taken off in the home and we want to exploit these trends in the Enterprise. Conversely, the performance expectations in the premium home segment are now closer to the Enterprise market, and we see opportunities to work with partners to create complete solutions for this segment using our combined assets. From the home, to the office, to school, to public venues like hotels, arenas and smart cities, ARRIS now has a soup-to-nuts capability in networking.
2. Scale matters. Ruckus Networks is now integrated into a large and stable business with the potential for greater investment and ambition. This will become manifest in manufacturing, operations and supply chain but also in R&D where we will be able to tap into complementary skill sets and know-how from DOCSIS to Wi-Fi, Ethernet and Optical communications.
3. Serving the Service Providers. In the service provider market, we believe we have a very clear leadership position in Wi-Fi with significant investments and commitment in all major markets serving residential, hotspot and managed services needs. Ruckus and ARRIS have common DNA in this area and can take advantage of our complementary footprint to better serve SPs of all shapes and sizes, while expanding our offer using our Ethernet switching, analytics from SCI and the Cloudpath security platform.
4. Transition to Cloud. Ruckus and ARRIS both have strong commitments to the future transition to IaaS for networking. The combination will allow us to double-down on our Cloud investment, which is critical to our continued growth in the market.
5. Technology Innovation. Finally, we share a passion for innovation such as our common interest in CBRS and the proliferation of OpenG LTE networks. ARRIS now has the potential to invest more aggressively on this front with solutions spanning the enterprise, smart city and residential markets using common platforms with a consistent user experience and integration with Wi-Fi. Some of our innovation will be focused on simplicity and hitting “the easy button” for networking. A great example of this is Unleashed and how we keep making this product family better and better for the SMB and premium home segment.
This is the beginning of a new journey for our team, but we are nothing without our partners, distributors and customers. Ruckus Networks will work to earn the nickname, “the Partner Networking Company,” because nurturing our critical partner and customer relationships is the most important ingredient for future growth and scale.
Thanks again for all of the support we have received from the Ruckus team who have humbled me with their passion, the ARRIS team who worked tirelessly to get this deal done, and to all of you who count yourselves as part of the Ruckus Pack.