Ruckus bought by Brocade

[psydii]

Another one bites the dust?

 

Brocade stirs up a Ruckus, swallows mobe kit maker for $1.5bn ? The Register

 

Brocade are not known for playing in the SME/Education sector.

 

The history of wireless buyouts is littered with the husks of once great little solutions.

[gomalley]

Had nothing but problems since taking over a Ruckus network, if their support drops more ammunition towards ripping it out and replacing it!

[sparkeh]

Aw heck. Ruckus have been awesome up 'till now, flawless kit at a decent price. Hope this isn't the end of that

[gomalley]

Decent price really, can't believe it is the only part of my network with no redundancy due to the price tag for a spare controller, yet we rely on it on a daily basis for 6 laptop trollies!

[sparkeh]

Decent price really, can't believe it is the only part of my network with no redundancy due to the price tag for a spare controller, yet we rely on it on a daily basis for 6 laptop trollies!

Hmm, we have a redundant controller, wasn't that much, guess you might be talking to the wrong people?

[Haptic]

It's an interesting quote from Selina Lo, by interesting I mean 'completely in line with what you'd expect from a US Listed Tech Firm CEO'

 

We've had a partnership with Brocade since 2014 so this heralds good news for us, it will be interesting to see how the acquisition takes shape over the next few years.

 

Our early (and completely unofficial) prediction is that it'll be business as usual certainly until this time next year/2018 - Ultimately with Brocade being (on the world stage) a solid product range that has strong interoperability with other major vendors it's unlikely they'll disrupt the product or the channel in any way. It will certainly work well to raise the profile of Brocade here in the UK however, especially as the SDN and IoT markets continue to expand.

 

If anyone has any questions they'd like to put to us feel free, we'll be certain to keep you updated with developments as they arise. On a side note @sparkeh is absolutely correct, redundant ZD units should be nicely discounted. Also @gomalley if you're experiencing issues with Ruckus support directly, feel free to drop us a DM - Even if you didn't use us for your roll-out we'll still help if we can.

 

Joe

[Net-Ctrl]

To compliment what has been said before, with Selina Lo still taking the lead on the Ruckus portfolio it gives us confidence in the future of their solution.

 

The acquisition follows the trend we have witnessed in the market over the last year or so with the HP - Aruba and Fortinet - Meru purchases.

 

The Ruckus partner conference kicks off tomorrow through to Friday. We have two people going along, we expect this topic to take centre stage and will provide an update when we return.

 

If people do have questions or concerns feel free to ask. If we can't answer them, we will bring them up during the conference and provide answers asap.

[gomalley]

Hmm, we have a redundant controller, wasn't that much, guess you might be talking to the wrong people?

 

a ZD3000 is over £4000 - arguably they maybe should have only bought a 1200 (site only has 30 access points) - but only option now would be to remove the 3000 and buy two 1200 - admittedly a lot cheaper, but a bit of a pain!

[gomalley]

@Haptic Unstable ZD, something on the network apparently interfering with it (never managed to work out what), so the ZD drops access to CLI or GUI, but still responds to Pings, it then drops access points and when I took over last summer it was requiring physically rebooting anywhere between 2-20 times a day.

 

the school had an open call with Ruckus for over 6 months of this when I arrived, and one replacement ZD still hadn't fixed it.

 

VLAN segregation of the management interface has made it stable, but now the nightmare is that it does not want to adopt an AP that has been replaced under warranty.

 

Comparing this to the Unifi network I had in my last site where it just worked - with similar levels of connected clients - you can probably understand my view of the Ruckus kit is not great!

[Net-Ctrl]

Apologies for jumping in, but some ideas to try:

 

Is something else on the network on the same IP as the ZD?

 

Can you take the ZD off and either ping the IP still or ARP resolve it to another Mac address?

 

If that isn't the issue do you have both Ethernet ports on the ZD plugged into the network?

 

If so you shouldn't. Only a single Ethernet port should be used on the ZD

[gomalley]

Apologies for jumping in, but some ideas to try:

 

Is something else on the network on the same IP as the ZD?

 

Can you take the ZD off and either ping the IP still or ARP resolve it to another Mac address?

 

If that isn't the issue do you have both Ethernet ports on the ZD plugged into the network?

 

If so you shouldn't. Only a single Ethernet port should be used on the ZD

 

Hi @Net-Ctrl , thanks for trying but bit late to the game, I've been through all the above and more last summer.

I'm not unhappy with it being VLAN'ed it is just the adoption of new AP that appears almost impossible, I need to find a Power Supply for the 7372 AP so I can completely isolate it on a standalone switch connected just to it the ZD and a laptop I think to adopt it, but currently powered from a PoE switch that is part of a stack.

[DMcCoy]

Lets hope they don't make it like the abomination that was the Brocade wireless controller last time I tried it.

 

Broken with the factory defaults! (SSL on by default, but *flash* interface would timeout when trying to change any settings). All traffic blocked due to VRRP being seen as a spoof attack...

 

It was better as the Motorola box with Java before the "Brocade firmware".

[truebluesteve]

Hi @Net-Ctrl , thanks for trying but bit late to the game, I've been through all the above and more last summer.

I'm not unhappy with it being VLAN'ed it is just the adoption of new AP that appears almost impossible, I need to find a Power Supply for the 7372 AP so I can completely isolate it on a standalone switch connected just to it the ZD and a laptop I think to adopt it, but currently powered from a PoE switch that is part of a stack.

 

I think I have a few spare Ruckus PSU's, so if you want to borrow one then PM me.

[john]

Mod Note - Edited thread title to be less dramatic as its not gone its just being bought.

[Arthur]

I wonder if Broadcom would buy Ruckus too?

 

Brocade Communications in Advanced Talks to Sell Itself

 

Brocade Communications Systems Inc. is in advanced talks to sell itself, according to people familiar with the matter.

 

The network-equipment maker is nearing the final stages of a sale process, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Chipmaker Broadcom Ltd. is one of the interested potential buyers, the people said. No deal has been reached and talks may still fall apart, they said.

 

An acquisition of Brocade could be announced as soon as this week, said the people. Brocade shares were down about 5 percent this year through Friday, giving it a market valuation of about $3.5 billion. The company has about $1.2 billion in cash and $1.5 billion in debt.

[localzuk]

Broadcom!? Good lord. I really hope not. Not sure why a chip manufacturer would want to enter a market that is so completely different to their own.

 

I'd've said someone like Lenovo would be a good choice to be honest. They've made good headway into EMEA with their PCs and Servers. However, their switches are Brocade OEM anyway IIRC, along with selling some Juniper gear, and owning Brocade would entirely make sense, and hand them a ready-made market.

[Net-Ctrl]

To keep you all updated, Broadcom has announced that it will be proceeding with the purchase of Brocade for $5.5 billion to expand its fibre channel and data storage business.

 

Due to competitive overlap with some of Broadcom’s customers, Broadcom will be selling the Ruckus and IP Networking side of the business once the purchase has gone through. It would seem that this is to be kept as a combined sale.

 

The sale is not due to happen for some time yet, we’re looking into the depths of 2017.

 

I’m sure more will come on this over the next few days, weeks and months.

 

In the short term, what does this mean to Ruckus customers, and those looking at purchase the solution?

 

In short, it remains to be seen. However, we have been given confidence that everything is business as usual. Ruckus has always been a great wireless solution and has been profitable for Ruckus and Brocade. Ruckus resellers will continue to support our customer bases as we have been.

 

We don’t foresee any problems in them finding the right buyer. The team behind the Ruckus name remains the same so we will continue to see great products coming out.

 

Official press release:

Brocade Newsroom

 

Blog post from Brocade, CEO.

https://community.brocade.com/t5/Wingspan/Broadcom-to-Acquire-Brocade/ba-p/89520

[m25man]

If Ruckus hasn't had a bad enough year so far it looks like its about to get a whole lot worse for them,

 

https://unifi-mesh.ubnt.com/#home

 

For whom the bell tolls.

[psydii]

I've yet to see a compelling argument for how a mesh based wireless network can stand up to 10s-100's of people using it to access streaming videos (facebook / periscope/ 'stories' / iplayer / netflix / facetime / Duo)

 

Aside from the London Underground (Cisco), I have never encountered a large scale wifi network that could be described as good. The other 'London wide' network (Ruckus) might be described as rubbish, and that was held up by the vendor as an exemplar deployment - so others entering its space to my mind pose no additional risk.

 

Their only hope is to be spun/bought out and the new owners keep the brand name. Similar to Arubu. They've spent 11 years building the brand and technical cachet, lets hope where they end up makes the most of it.