Ruckus President Details Partner Benefits from Acquisition by Arris

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Arris, the entertainment and communications technology company, has completed its $800 million purchase of Brocade’s Ruckus Wireless and ICX switch business from Broadcom.

The deal was contingent on Broadcom closing its Brocade acquisition, which it did last month. As an Arris company, Ruckus will operate as a business unit with its own engineering, sales and marketing resources focused on the enterprise market.

Ruckus Networks’ Dan Rabinovitsj

Dan Rabinovitsj, president of Ruckus Networks, a new Arris business unit, tells Channel Partners that Arris and Ruckus are long-standing partners, and there’s not much overlap between the two companies in terms of partner profile, “so clearly there will be opportunities for channel partners on both sides.”

“We have channel partners that are in really specialized, diverse areas of the market focusing on specific verticals, in some cases like education, K-12 or higher ed, or hospitality, and service providers that go after large swaths of the midmarket,” he said. “But we also have channel partners that have specialized traditionally in the premium home market. So there I do think there’s in particular going to be some interesting opportunities to take advantage of Arris technology and what they could integrate there, and vice versa.”

During the past year, Ruckus has been focused on “delivering what we promised from a roadmap perspective” to partners in all areas of the business, Rabinovitsj said.

“Going forward, for the enterprise business … it’s very clear for the traditional enterprise channel partners that this is business as usual,” he said. “We’re not going to go through an extended period of integration where we’re going to be questioning do we change our partner program or our approach to the market. None of that is happening. We are locked and loaded, and we’ve been operating this way independently for several months. So we don’t plan on making big changes.”

On the technology side, there will be opportunities to bring “the best of both worlds together in an interesting way,” Rabinovitsj said. There’s a lot of innovation that’s taking place in the home that hasn’t yet reached the enterprise, he said.

“We see that as a big opportunity to leverage a lot of the capabilities that Arris has already and has started on, and bringing that more aggressively into the enterprise,” he said.

Arris CEO Bruce McClelland said the acquisition allowed his company to “think about building out a new enterprise-based business.”

“And as I’ve gotten around and been able to talk to a few of your customers, there’s a huge potential for us to really build on the platform …  the platform being this strong set of channel partners and add more to that business,” he said. “The vision is we’re going to become one of the largest technology companies providing technology and services to both carriers and enterprise. We have a huge runway ahead of us in that area. What could be more exciting than that? It’s fantastic.”