TALKING BUSINESS
THE
SECRET
SAUCE
In the third instalment of a
three-part series, Moe Raslan,
Director, Middle East, Ruckus
Wireless, talks to Intelligent CIO
about high-density WiFi, taming
BYOD and the issues around
security of the network.
C
an you give is a brief
history of Ruckus Wireless
in the region and products
and solutions provided?
Ruckus Wireless started in 2004 with the
objective of enhancing WiFi offerings that
were available in the market. If you look at
the market in 2004 and what companies
were doing with WiFi, everything was very
standard and omni-directional signally.
People felt there was a boom in the
supply of smart devices; everyone needed
connectivity, and mobility was a big topic.
However, WiFi itself was not ready for
this type of boom. So, the engineers who
designed Ruckus wondered how they could
improve WiFi in a manner that could handle
density more than what was available in the
market. So, they came up with BeamFlex.
Beamflex is our patent technology - call it
our “secret sauce” if you may.
It provides smart antennas at access
points and ensures that more devices are
connected to a single AP and have better
signalling and connectivity. There are other
features that came later on to enhance our
access points, for example, the Channelfly,
encryption security etc… and we add more
and more features to our technology as we
go on to ensure that it benefits the user and
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is also provided at an affordable price.
We primarily focus on service providers
and the hospitality sector as they benefit
the most from having a solution that can
handle density. It is a big deal for these
sectors to get it right, and to get it right fast!
For example, there was a survey that stated
that 67% of unsatisfied WiFi users of a
hotel never revisit it again.
In terms of the products and solutions
offered, Ruckus offers brocade products
and services, smart wireless services and
software, system management and control
and access points.
Looking at 2016-2017, what does
Ruckus see as the main demands
of end-user enterprises in the
region in terms networking
infrastructure?
Everyone is talking about the ability of
machines to talk to machines. We need
to bring in technologies that are most
important for this period - technologies
that can provide this kind of concept to
the market faster and make sure that the
integration of these ideas is met in the field.
The internet of things and the cloud are
concepts that everyone is really concerned
about and prioritising. If you look at other
companies in this field, this is surely the
topic of choice now, and vendors are
really going about it to make sure that
their technology is complementing and
contributing to these initiatives. We are
bringing a lot of advantages to this area.
Many of our upcoming technologies are
related to enhancing this.
In comparison to more
developed markets, are
enterprises in the region
adequately aware of and/
or preparing sufficiently for
more strain on their networks,
especially in the age of hybrid
cloud adoption?
Absolutely. We talk about the Middle
East as being an emerging market, but
you can’t conduct a general analysis like
this and say that the Middle East as a
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