RUCKUS Networks on the Future of Wireless Infrastructure in the AI Era

Hey, everyone. Welcome back here to Text Trunk tv. Yeah, I haven't had the pleasure of, of having this gentleman on.

It's kind to be a couple years I bet already. Uh, Bart Giordano, Bart is the president over at Ruckus Networks. We're happy to have him back.

Hey, Bart, how are you man? I'm doing really great, Alan. It has been too long, so thanks very much for inviting us back into this forum.

Uh, you know what? Don't make it like it's my fault. You could have come back anytime, just drop a note and say, Hey, I got something to talk about.

Mm-hmm. You bet. But thank you.

Thank you for coming. Uh, Bart, as I mentioned, you're the president over at Ruckus. We're going to get into Ruckus in a second, but before we do, give folks a sense kind of, of how you wound up to be president here, what your career path has been like.

Well, thanks Alan. And, and again, thanks for having us onto techstrong. So, um, I've built a career here in Silicon Valley over the last, gosh, I hate to say 25 years Now.

I get it. Yeah, Exactly. Uh, I actually started off, uh, as a, as a software engineer and as my, my career evolved in that realm, and I started interfacing more with, with product managers and others, um, I got really curious about the front end of of businesses.

Um, I, I started off writing software at Cisco and transitioned to, uh, the semiconductor industry, which is where I really caught my teeth in, in wireless. Um, and, you know, ultimately joined Ruckus to lead their business development organization. That was almost 11 years ago now.

And Wow. Uh, throughout my career at Ruckus, I've had the opportunity to lead sales, um, run product management, uh, and I've been general managing the business for about four years now, and it's the best job I ever had. Good for you, man.

Good for you. Bart. Did you ever think hardware would be as sexy as it is again?

Well, you know, I think the reality is, hardware's a very important part of the story, but what's happened is companies have evolved to full stack solutions. So we sell a lot of hardware. What makes the hardware really fantastic and what helps us deliver solutions that really solve customer challenges is the hardware, the firmware running on that hardware, the applications in the cloud to manage really complex environments, and now incorporating artificial intelligence into that in order to automate a lot of network management.

So it's the full stack that comes together to, to solve business problems for our customers that we call purpose-driven networking at Ruckus Networks. Very cool. I I think there's a point there that Bears kind of sharpening up a bit, which is you could have the greatest hardware, you could have the greatest semis, you could have the greatest chassis platform, whatever.

If you don't have the software stack optimized for it, it just doesn't com no pun. It just doesn't compute. Right.

It just doesn't work. Yeah. And, and that software stack, you know, depending vendor to vendor to vendor, there's always an element of kind of, let's call it in-house Yeah.

Software, right? Yeah. And, and oftentimes today that in-house software, a lot of the hardware vendors are open sourcing to get it into the hands of as many people as possible.

And then there's the ecosystem that develops around it. That's right. And that, and that's really what separates a lot of the, the haves from the have-nots, right?

How big that ecosystem, how deep it is. Uh, yeah. Philosophy at Ruckus has always been around openness, right?

Yeah. So we believe a, like, to your point, a lot of the value in the solutions we bring are going to be derived by the APIs up the, the top of our stack that will allow us to fit into our customer's existing workflows and infrastructure environment, and enable third parties to bring their own value based on the telemetry we can give them out of the network. And, you know, our philosophy really is if you're gonna add a feature, right?

The API first, um, yeah, we're a very API driven, uh, organization, and we want you to be able to get the full functionality out of that full stack, uh, from our, from our APIs. Agreed. You know what, Bart, I realize we jumped right into it here.

We didn't even kinda give Ruckus a proper introduction. I'm assuming a lot of people out here have heard of Ruckus, are very familiar with Ruckus even, but I'm sure there's a lot of people who aren't. Certainly.

So why don't we, why don't we get everyone on an even footing here? Bart, give us kind of the ruckus story, if you will. Yeah.

So Ruckus is a 20 plus year old company now. We celebrated our incorporation, uh, after two decades in June of 2000 and, and 24, you know, we started as a, a wifi business, uh, an enterprise wifi solution that solved a very unique problem, um, of distributing high definition video around a home. Um, before that was a use case that we all took for granted.

Mm-hmm. Obviously, our business has, has evolved considerably. We are, uh, a full fledged enterprise networking portfolio today.

Um, both enterprise wifi campus switching, and then, as I mentioned, and entire software solution stack on top of that that's now AI driven. That is solving some of the toughest challenges in enterprise networking. Uh, we tend to be very focused on vertical market segments where we think our value proposition resonates, where, where the problems are the toughest, that's sort of where we really shine.

So you think of places that, um, struggle with extreme user density, um, stadiums or arenas or airports or, um, you know, networks that have very dynamic physical environments, a factory or a warehouse where things are moving around, uh, quite frequently, and you can't make assumptions on the day you install that network of what it's gonna look like tomorrow. Um, and so you have to have an adaptive resilient system that's able to perform under those dynamic and, and demanding conditions. And that, that's where Ruckus really thrives.

We serve anything from, um, a smart home, uh, to a higher education campus, to a university, um, to some of the, you know, uh, largest venues in in, in the world. Um, we do a lot in municipal municipalities where they're deploying wifi, for example, on the streets of, of New York City. So really challenging environments.

Um, that's where you wanna select Ruckus. That's where our, our platforms tend to shine. Excellent.

Excellent. You know, look, I, you're, you can say it because you work there, but I can, you know, for me, and this is going back before I started, you know, uh, tech Strong, I was, what, 12 years ago? This goes back to when I was, it's still secure and some another, you know, another startup that I had found it really the way the kind of the wifi in the office kind of shook out for us was you could play with a lot of these solutions that, let's face it, they're really home solutions that you're using in an office.

Yeah. And I'm not naming names, and it's not that they're bad, you know, today's meshes and wifi sevens and all that, we've come a long way from back in the day. Yeah.

But if you wanted to get an industrial wifi solution right. That is gonna be reliable, you know, and people aren't gonna be wasting their time, you know, rea reattaching, reattaching reattaching renewing and, and all the other stuff, rockets became kind of the gold standard for, for office grade, enterprise class wifi. Yeah.

And that even if you were in a hotel sometime, you know, any kind of commercial setting, it, it really, Yeah. I appreciate you calling that out. I think, um, ruckus was really born out of serving largely guest facing public wifi networks, which have a very, uh, discreet problem to solve, maybe from even a traditional co carpeted office or corporate environment, you know, in a corporate environment.

Um, typically you're dealing with, with very symmetrical RF space, um, not a large density of users, right. Particularly today. Yeah.

Right. You, you don't get everybody coming into the office office. Yep.

And you have an IT organization that is actually controlling the devices that come on that network. Um, and your users tend to be fairly sophisticated, you know, compare that with a hotel or out on a city street, um, or in a classroom where you can't make any assumptions about the sophistication of your users. You're dealing with a very dynamic environment.

You are going to see every possible conceivable device, uh, ever made with wifi connectivity come onto that network. So you can't make any assumptions about the, the nature of the devices. You're gonna see.

Some of them might be, Well, the nature of the users 20 Years old. Yes, exactly. Because some of those people are just devious and they just wanna figure out how to get around the, the policies or whatever, right.

Devious or, or, or not technically sophisticated. Um, And it just needs, well, and that's the other str Yeah. The very technically devious people or innocent, you know, newbies.

Yeah. It runs the gamut, I guess. And It just, and it just has to work.

So Ruckus was really designed for that case where the environment is extremely dynamic. Um, you're dealing with a large diversity of, of users periods of extreme high density, and you need to bring carrier grade and, and enterprise class reliability. Um, and so when you solve for that, almost everything else seemed simple by, by comparison.

Absolutely. Look, I remembered in the early days of wifi, and you know, I traveled most of my life, right? Like, you, we, we've all, um, it was 50 50 in a lot of hotels, right?

You know, whether what, what they would tell you, oh, you're in this room. Well, the WAP for that's really down far. We may have to transfer you to another wap.

It wouldn't automatically move you from wap. Thank God for companies like Ruckus who kind of made that, That's really how we made a name for ourself because, um, I mean, you, you take it for granted today, but if you go to a hotel property with your family and experience this, and your kids are complaining the entire week about how they can't get on the network and sort of ruining the vacation, and now your wife's a little bit upset that the the kids aren't happy, you're probably not going back to that property. And more than likely you'll go on to TripAdvisor or one of these other, um, platforms and, and complain about it, right?

Yeah. Which is the death now for a hotel property and the general manager there who's measured on guest satisfaction and, and loyalty. And when we started off in the hospitality space, we were actually able to correlate the installation of a Ruckus network with a market increase in the guest satisfaction at, at that property.

So I think you've hit on something that's real deal right there that we've all, all experienced before. Yep. Hey, Bart, I I wanna jump into the topic of discussion today, but before we do, people who wanna find out more about Ruck, maybe there's some hotel operators out there right now is saying, my God, where have you been?

I need this. How, how did they, how did they get on onto the ruckus, sort of on-ramp here, if you will. Yeah.

Very, very simple. com. com is a great place to start.

Excellent. All right. If it's okay with you, Bard, I want to kind of pivot a little bit please and talk about, you guys recently announced your, uh, pro A VI CX switch portfolio with AAV enhanced update to management platforms.

Look, those are, you know, that's some technical jargon we threw out there, but what's it mean? So, um, you know, when I, when I was growing up, I was always tinkering with electronics, and I was the one that would set up the VCR for the family and get the TVs connected and figure out how the, all the remotes work. And back in those days, um, there were, and, and subsequently many different standards applied to connecting AV equipment.

You had RCA Jacks, um, for connecting video equipment, and you had these stereo jacks for connecting, um, audio equipment. Um, and then that evolved to standard like HDMI, and you would end up with like 50 different cables coming out of the back of your TV depending on what you were trying to, to connect. And if you had to do that over long distances, it became pretty challenging.

Uh, more recently what's happened is, uh, a lot of those standards have converged onto running over traditional IP networks. And so there's this, this convergence happening in the audio video industry where they want to take advantage of the fact that every building, every facility, every venue has an IP network today. 'cause they're providing connectivity for lots of different services.

So as that convergence is playing out, um, you know, you have traditional a AV folks, um, who are maybe not as familiar with, uh, IP protocols and, and networking standards that are now thrust into this world of running, um, you know, high definition video and very low latency audio over a traditional IP infrastructure. And so our goal with the introduction of the ICX Pro AV line is to really dramatically simplify running these traditional AV protocols over the, the corporate network. And so what we've done is we've configured kind of an out of the box experience, uh, plug and play, if you will, so that if you wanna run foreign eight k video, um, over an IP network and you wanna run really high, um, quality audio, you can do that without really intimate knowledge of, of networking itself.

And that really is the, uh, advancement that we've made in our, our pro ev line is enabling AV professionals to leverage IP networking to move very low latency and very low jitter, uh, audio visual protocols over these networks. Look, I'm a bit of a power user. I admit it.

You know, my name's Alan, and I'm a power user. My home has over a hundred IP addresses. Like, I, I'm gonna wind up using a a c class myself pretty soon, But, You know, because I've, I've got 20 something, so I think I got 27 Sonos devices, right?

So I actually have a sub network of just Sonos running underneath my SSI, you know, my regular wifi network, right? And then I, I ethernet into my TVs, but well, I actually ethernet into my streaming devices usually. And then HDMI from the streaming devices to the TVs.

'cause I use a lot of Apple TV and all that stuff. I, I'm not your typical home user, let's put it at that. And I have eight K TVs, I have 4K TVs, and I'm, you know, and Dolby Atmos, and then any kind new, you know, things out there.

I, I live this life, right? I I, and I'm almost my own campus in my own house. But it's so important because the last thing you want is to have all of that great of equipment and you gotta fuzzy picture, right, right, right in the middle of the Super Bowl.

That's just not acceptable. Right. And, you know, and whether we're talking about it at my house or I'm talking about it at a restaurant or, or, uh, a corporate gathering, today's audience has very low tolerance for fuzzy pictures, buffering, you know, beach balls, bad sound, that sounds like robotics or something like a robot talking and e even on planes, right?

I mean, I can't stream on the plane. What are you good? Is this 1998?

You know? And so I would imagine this is something that customers are demanding, right? The market market's demanding.

Yeah. And to solve that problem that you just described, um, what historically happened is you would build a bespoke, almost air gapped AV network to run all that traffic over because you're very concerned that all my other traffic may disrupt it. And you'll get the buffering, or you'll get the, the dropouts, which again, people have no tolerance for if in a public setting, they can put you in a very embarrassing situation if you're trying to produce an event.

And, you know, our goal is that you should be able to run all of this traffic over, um, one network, whether that be your, your standard corporate traffic or your AV traffic. And the network itself is smart enough and in an automated way can identify the AV traffic and prioritize it to ensure a very high quality of service, even if you have bursts of traffic coming from your other, your sources. So, um, we want to simplify the network design.

Uh, we wanna provide a very consistent, um, and, uh, out of the box experience when you're deploying this and allow those networks to converge, which ultimately saves customers time and, and money when they're deploying and operating this infrastructure. You just described us here at Textron. Uh, you know, we were talking before we got on that I'm in my Textron studio today, and we, we actually have three different sets, right?

Where we could be shooting concurrently and then we're streaming, you know, streaming up into the neck, bringing stuff down, and, and that's exactly what we, you know, we have a QOS and we, and by the way, we have three different bandwidth providers coming in here, right. All fiber, because we can't afford to be down. We need that kinda redundancy.

And that's exactly our challenge, right? Having A-A-Q-O-S sort router or switch, if you will, that brings in all three of these bandwidth providers divs up our, or, or prioritizes our traffic based on, you know, our, uh, wishes and, and normalizes all of this, right? And oh, and by the way, we need wifi for everyone sitting at their desk.

That's Right. Right. Just good old wifi.

And, um, it's not easy and it's not getting easier because I think the lesson, and you've probably seen this in your years at Ruckus, we're never going to use less bandwidth. We're never gonna want less speed. We're never going to transmit less information.

You know, I remember when I thought my 30 megabit hard drive was more than I'd ever need. Right? Right.

And the mindset, the mindset and the mindset now, and, and, and we take it for granted to the extent now we perceive this as a utility, right? The reliability is the same as the power and the water. It just always has to work.

And by the way, if you ask Me, well, that's the expectation. If You ask me to give up one of those, I'm gonna give up the hot water before I give up the wifi. Definitely a few of my engineers here qualify with that.

I'm pretty sure. But yes, you're right. But it is, I mean, it, the today's consumer, and I don't mean it as a consumer like CI mean, consumer of bandwidth, let's call it.

Right? Right. Whether they're in an enterprise or at home, their demands and expectations are, you know, sky high.

I, I wanted it to work. It's like the old macro, you know, I just want it to work. I don't care what you're doing.

I want it to work All the time. And there's, uh, I think, um, you know, being in this industry and, and running this business, I have a deep appreciation for the complexity underneath all of that to make it work. Um, yeah.

And, you know, we've got really incredible and talented engineers that, that, um, work tirelessly to ensure that at the end of the day, um, the customer can take it for granted, and they can perceive this as a utility regardless of whether you're passively browsing over the wifi or you're transmitting your eight K video over a, a, a network. Uh, it's gotta work under any conditions, um, with that enterprise grade quality and reliability. Absolutely.

com and look up more information about this new switch portfolio with the AV enhancements. That's right. You know, I think one of the things that, um, maybe caught us a little bit by surprise when we were, uh, developing these advancements is not only were the, the capabilities in terms of the, the protocols themselves really important, but also the, as aesthetics of the solution, right?

Oftentimes these are going into a home, and if you open a, open a typical wiring closet in, uh, an office, you know, you see wires coming out of the spaghetti front of these panels and patch panels in a home, they don't wanna see any of that, right? So we actually had to physically put the, uh, switch ports on the back, so you just see a nice, clean flush, uh, panel. com.

Let us quick, one other area I wanted to hit on Barr. I know we're running low on time, but you guys also recently, uh, announced a strategic relationship with Crestron, one of the biggest Yeah. Uh, you know, communication solutions providers in the world, and you joined the, uh, S-D-V-O-E Alliance.

Certainly Put 'em together for me so people know what we're talking about. Yeah, I think, you know, in the realm of a av uh, home AV solutions, smart home solutions, building management solutions, Crestron really stands out among the leaders. And so ensuring that we are interoperable, uh, with our pro AV solutions out of the box with Crestron was very important.

And in partnering, uh, and joining the S-D-V-O-E Alliance, we have access to all of these protocols and, and the way to measure and test, um, the fact that we are compliant and, and interoperable, um, is really important there. So, um, these two partnerships are, are ones that are core and fundamental to our success in, in this space, and we're really proud to be part of these organizations and their programs. Fantastic.

Um, what is the S-D-V-O-E alliance? What's S-D-V-O-E stand for for people who are not familiar, Um, video over something, something video over ethernet. Yes.

Um, at the end of the day, there are very unique sets of protocols that have been devised in order to transmit, you know, high definition video and, and, uh, audio over a traditional IP network. And so the S-D-V-O-E Alliance defines a standard by which you can do that. And if you adhere to that standard, you're gonna be able to provide that very high quality of service, even for, um, low latency or latency sensitive and jitter sensitive traffic.

Like, like video and audio. Absolutely. I'll just close it with this.

You know, we, we recently in our, the, the Homeowners Association where I live recently went through a thing to adopt a, a new, uh, bandwidth provider. And a lot of this stuff came out, you know, we, they came in to talk to us and the idea is, you know, sure, you might use 5G wireless today, and it works for on your standard or HD definition, and you don't really do much. But with AI and, and everything that's coming down our pike, even in the home or, and so envious working from home using video teleconferencing and stuff, you can't afford to be, you know, running on, I mean, running, running on, you know, a cable where you're getting 40 megs up tops, you know, and maybe even a gig down, but 40 meg up tops, it's just not gonna cut it in three years or five years.

Yeah. You need, you need a big boy stick, and I don't mean it in a bad way, but you need, you need a pro solution that, that, you know, is gonna enjoy all these new great things that we have available to us. What's simple to deploy and manage.

And I think that's, well, That, yeah, we're using Ultimately our philosophy. Absolutely. Take all the complex, take all the complexity in the underlying solution, but make it very simple to adopt in a plug and life fashion.

That really was our design approach with this latest pro ev line of switches. I love it. Bart, we gotta run.

We, we went way over time, but it was great catching up with you. Don't stay away so long. Come back and keep us posted.

We'll be back. Thanks so much for the time, Alan. We'll talk soon.

My Pleasure. Bart Orano, president Ruckus Networks here on Text Trunk tv. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back.