Cisco, Ruckus target hospitality and education with new switches; Broadcom supplies chipsets.
Hospitality and education are two of the more important markets for companies that make Ethernet switches and routers, and in both of these environments the quality of the network is often judged by how well mobile devices perform. This week, Ruckus and Cisco both launched new Ethernet switches integrated with the companies’ Wi-Fi access points and designed to scale as customers add more mobile devices to their networks.
Ruckus’s ICX switch portfolio comes from Brocade, which purchased Ruckus for about $1.5 billion earlier this year. Brocade itself is now being bought by Broadcom Limited, the company formed when Singapore’s Avago bought Broadcom for $37 billion.
Broadcom is divesting the Ruckus/Brocade IP business, which will generate roughly $1 billion in revenue this year. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is said to be interested and the company’s executives may also want to take the business private. The Brocade team sees significant value in the Ruckus customer base and in the opportunity to integrate its switching portfolio with the Ruckus access points.
“What we saw as the two businesses came together was there was significant opportunity to continue both of our track records of growing faster than the market, if you’re able to leverage each other’s strengths,” said Siva Valliappan, VP of the company’s campus business. “One of the things we wanted to do on the switch side was to really be the best switch that a Ruckus wireless access point can connect to.”
Hagai Feiner, founder and CEO of Ruckus partner Access Networks, said one of the new product’s key differentiators is its ability to upgrade uplinks from 1GbE to 10GbE with a software license, which makes it easier for customers to add more devices to their networks. The stackable switches can also scale by integrating with other parts of the ICX product line. Each port can deliver up to 30 watts of power, and Valliappan said the switch will be offered in a configuration that will enable full power over Ethernet to every port so that a large number of wireless access points can be connected.
Brocade said Ruckus leads the industry in sales of wireless network equipment to the hospitality customers and multiple dwelling units. The company also said Ruckus has seen more market share growth this year than any other company selling into the U.S. primary education market, despite an unexpected drop in government spending through the E-Rate program. Valliappan said customers have ordered the company’s newest switches even before they hit the market.
The newly branded Ruckus switches are powered by Broadcom’s Hurricane chipset. According to analyst Linley Gwennap, Broadcom’s Hurricane 3 chip provides eight network interfaces running at 1 gigabit per second or 2.5 Gbps, as well as four 10 Gbps uplinks.
Cisco Meraki updates switches and access points
Cisco, which bought Meraki four years ago in order to double down on Wi-Fi in the enterprise, is upgrading both its switching and wireless access point portfolios this month. The company is set to introduce a wall plate access point with integrated switch ports designed specifically for hospitality and certain multidwelling use cases, like university dorms. Cisco also plans to add stacking and 10-gigabit small form factor pluggable uplinks to all its new access switches, but will keep price points at current levels.
“The core value proposition and the focus has not changed,” said Pablo Estrada, director of marketing at Cisco Meraki, who has been with Meraki since before the acquisition. “That’s really to simplify IT and, in the case of today, specifically to simplify networking wireless and switching to be precise and we use cloud technology really as a means to that end.”
This week Cisco also announced upgrades to its cloud platform. These upgrades target data centers and central offices more than hotels and campus environments.
