Brocade to Acquire Ruckus Wireless to Build a Networking Company for the Digital Transformation Era

As you may have seen earlier today, Ruckus and Brocade have entered into an agreement whereby Brocade intends to acquire Ruckus. We expect the acquisition to close in the third quarter of Brocade’s fiscal year, which ends July 31, 2016. The combined companies will have the strategy, products, talent, and focus needed to deliver the solutions that customers and partners require to compete in the modern world of digital business.

As companies move to digitize their business, they need a new network architecture that allows for greater business agility. This New IP architecture enables the network to become a platform for innovation for developing, delivering, and securing applications.

Wireless is a critical access technology and the combination of Brocade and Ruckus creates a new pure-play networking company with solutions spanning from the heart of the data center to the wireless network edge. Together they will bring new and exciting opportunities and benefits to their partners worldwide.,

Ruckus wants  to highlight a few items in the announcement that are particularly relevant.

First, both companies are 100 percent committed to business as usual for the foreseeable future. Both companies will continue to operate independently until the transaction is closed. Post close, Ruckus is expected to operate as a business unit within Brocade, with Selina Lo as the head of the business unit, reporting to the Brocade CEO, Lloyd Carney. Ruckus will reaffirm a clear commitment to delivering on the roadmap that we have publicly communicated over the last year and which will be updated at upcoming Big Dogs events in Europe, Asia and America.

Second, all aspects of the Big Dogs partner program, including partner levels, certification, sales programs, discounting, and so on will remain in place and unchanged at this time. Over time, we expect the integration of Ruckus with Brocade will bring their collective partners greater opportunities to offer a broader portfolio of wired and wireless LAN solutions.

Lastly, the Ruckus sales and sales engineering teams that have been supporting you will not change. The Ruckus sales and customer support teams are two of the assets that Brocade values most highly.

Throughout this process, they will strive to make this a frictionless transition for their customers and partners, with minimal distractions so you can continue to effectively market, sell and service Ruckus solutions.