New WLAN Management-as-a-Service Offer Combines Cloud Simplicity with Better Wi-Fi

SUNNYVALE – July 26, 2016 – Ruckus Wireless, Inc., now part of Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD), today announced the general availability of Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi, a wireless local area network (WLAN) management-as-a-service offer powered by the new Ruckus public cloud platform. Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi enables distributed organizations with limited IT resources to set up, monitor and manage a high-performance multi-site WLAN of any size. Featuring an intuitive, intent-driven user interface for managing some of the industry’s highest performing access points (APs), network managers benefit from cloud simplicity without having to compromise on Wi-Fi performance.

“Customers shouldn’t have to sacrifice end user experience in order to reap the benefits of the cloud,” said Dan Rabinovitsj, chief operating officer, Ruckus Wireless Business Unit, Brocade. “They also shouldn’t have to be locked into a single architecture—if they need to change, their APs should change with them. With Cloud Wi-Fi, customers don’t need to make these tradeoffs anymore. Using the Ruckus Cloud platform, we will continue to introduce compelling as-a-service offers that can include cloud-managed switching and cloud-managed for in-building LTE service based on OpenG™ technology.”

With the introduction of Cloud Wi-Fi, Ruckus Wireless now offers the industry’s broadest range of deployment options—public cloud, data center or private cloud, hardware or virtual appliance, and controller-less—making it a leader in WLAN architectural flexibility. Ruckus partners will benefit by participating in the fast-growing, cloud-managed WLAN market while simultaneously addressing a broader set of deployment requirements. In the future, the company plans to introduce Ruckus Cloud support for in-building LTE service and Brocade® ICX® switches, delivering an integrated platform simplifying the configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting of both wired and wireless networks.

“The WLAN market experienced substantial growth in the first quarter of 2016, a trend that we expect to continue, in part due to increased demand for the well-established benefits of cloud-managed WLAN services,“ said Nolan Greene, senior research analyst, network infrastructure at IDC. “Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi offers a simple-to-deploy, less time-intensive alternative to on-premises controller architectures and will enable even the most IT-constrained organizations to easily manage dozens or even hundreds of sites.”

Key Cloud Wi-Fi features and benefits include:

• Best-in-class Wi-Fi performance : Cloud Wi-Fi customers use the same industry-leading APs that consistently outperform competing products in third-party testing. With the ability to excel in challenging user density, interference and physical environments, customers can use fewer APs than competing vendors would require. Alternatively, customers can use the same number of APs to build a network that easily accommodates the growing requirements for years to come.

• Intent-driven user interface (UI) : The Cloud Wi-Fi UI is designed to display only the data the user needs to accomplish a task and the system automates tasks whenever possible. This intuitive approach enables IT to spend less time managing and status-checking the WLAN without the need for technical training or certifications.

• An intuitive, full-featured mobile app : The Cloud Wi-Fi mobile app allows IT managers to carry the network with them wherever they are, get notified whenever the network needs attention and make instant changes right from their pocket.

• Cloud-scale : The cloud-scale nature of the Ruckus Cloud platform allows Cloud Wi-Fi customers to add APs and sites at will, with no more effort required to add the thousandth AP or the hundredth site than the first of either. Such scaling comes with no increase in management complexity and a single user interface provides visibility to the entire network, no matter how large or distributed it may be.

• Analytics and reporting : The big data warehouse within the Ruckus Cloud infrastructure allows for highly granular reporting of up to six months of KPIs, ranging from low-level per-radio airtime utilization to layer-7 application visibility.

• AP investment protection : APs used in a Cloud Wi-Fi deployment can be reused in any of Ruckus’ other deployment options, should circumstances demand.

A number of Ruckus customers have implemented Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi prior to the market introduction, and the results have been positive. “We have approximately 4,500 students within our seven schools across the district, and having Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi is important for a couple of reasons,” said Aaron Souza, director of information technology, Minooka School District. “We have a fairly tight budget when it comes to personnel, so being able to manage our Wi-Fi from an off-site location is a huge benefit to us. Not only that, but Cloud Wi-Fi’s simple deployment and ease of use saves us time so that we can instead focus on important issues such as providing systems and applications our students need for learning.”

“We’ve been able to use Ruckus Cloud Wi-Fi with the added assurance that the APs can be managed by any of the Ruckus management architectures,” said Curtis McKay, network administrator, Belleville School District. “As a result, it’s been extremely helpful in managing the amount of devices both students and staff bring into our schools on a daily basis, without affecting performance or connectivity.”