Arrris to buy Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business from Broadcom after Brocade deal closes

Tom Paine

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As was rumored and reported upon in January, ARRIS International and Broadcom Limited today jointly announced that they have entered into an agreement for ARRIS to acquire Brocade Communication Systems Inc.'s Ruckus Wireless and ICX Switch business for $800 million in cash, plus the additional cost of unvested employee stock awards, following the closing of Broadcom's acquisition of Brocade.

Some were skeptical that this deal would occur, but the reports in January were right on target. In addition, Arris' CFO signaled a possible move into wireless at a Wall Street conference in January.

"This portfolio will expand ARRIS's leadership in converged wired and wireless networking technologies beyond the home into the education, public venue, enterprise, hospitality, and MDU segments. ARRIS plans to establish a dedicated business unit within the company focused on innovative wireless networking and wired switching technology to address evolving and emerging needs across a number of vertical markets." Arris said in a statement announcing the deal.

Converged wired and wireless networking technologies, or 'hybrid networks', are the key. As I wrote last month, expect to see Ruckus technology deployed as Arris' two largest customers, Comcast and Charter, introduce wireless offerings this year. Making wireless cell networks and Wifi work smoothly together will be critical to the Cable companies' plans.

From January:

Why Arris might bid on Ruckus Wireless assets? For its own customers, of course

Startup Roundup: GovPilot and eureQa

GIVON ZIRKIND AND ESTHER SURDEN

                                     Michael Bonner of GovPilot and Badri Nittoor of eureQa. 

                                                  | Esther Surden / Marc Weinstein

GovPilot: GovPilot (Hoboken), a municipal software provider, released its newest software product, a mobile app called “GovAlert,” in both Android and iPhone versions. The app allows constituents to voice their concerns and send photos to their elected officials and to their municipalities immediately, in real time. Texts are automatically routed by zip code to the proper official/department for remedial action. And the app is free to constituents.

GovAlert is an outgrowth of GovPilot's software's “report a concern” feature, which was used quite successfully by Camden County in the summer of 2016 for mosquito control and Zika virus prevention, Camden Coutny freeholder Carmen Rodriguez, said in an article.

The app supports common non-emergency citizen complaints regarding such areas as mosquito control, animal control, buildings, businesses, construction, garbage, health and sanitation, traffic signals, parking and more. Once the complaint is classified, the user is prompted to describe the problem and provide a related image.

GIS software aids the government in analyzing the complaints, visualizing the problems, and responding more appropriately; also, the responses are given the necessary prioritization. GovAlert is integrated into GovPilot's municipality software, so it’s aware if a municipality is using GovPilot or not. If a municipality is using GovPilot, complaints via GovAlert are automatically streamed into the government's workflow, and GovPilot will advise the constituent of the steps being taken in the resolution process. For municipalities that are not using GovPilot, the complaints are texted to the mayor's office.







eureQua: eureQa (Cherry Hill), an SaaS automation platform for e-commerce testing, has raised $400K in follow-on funding from leading investors active in the Philadelphia area.

Participants in the current round included SRI Capital (Hyderabad, India), a seed-stage venture fund focused on the "as a service" economy and “deep tech,” along with Robert J. Ciaruffoli, former chairman and CEO of ParenteBeard (Philadelphia, Pa.); Walter Buckley, cofounder, chairman and CEO of Radnor, Pa.-based Actua (formerly ICG and Internet Capital Group); and Thomas J. Gravina, cofounder, CEO and chairman of GPX Enterprises (Philadelphia, Pa.), a private investment firm, the startup said in a release.

The company uses automation to bring speed, scale and efficiency to e-commerce software testing. Clients like Bare Necessities and Weight Watchers have reduced testing times by 85% and testing costs by 75% with the eureQa platform, eureQa claimed.

“Using eureQa, we are finding, validating and fixing a greater number of critical issues than we were before, and we are able to address these critical issues earlier in the project cycle. eureQa is key to our ability to hit our dates and launch with confidence, knowing we are stable,” said William Saccone, senior director, quality assurance at Bare Necessities (Edison).




Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.

The end of OTT

Simon Frost
Guest Contributor

There shouldn’t be a single person reading this short article that isn’t familiar with the term OTT. Since the meteoric rise of video delivered over IP-based networks of another party and famous, internet-based companies that built value-based businesses on the top of those providing internet connectivity, we have become familiar with the term.

Delivering video over IP isn’t new of course. It has been with us for over 15 years and the spectrum of quality, performance and content brands associated with IP video has been broad. What we have referred to as ‘IPTV’ was the service of television that the telecoms industry introduced (with an emulation of cable TV being their starting point). We have also called this managed IP video.

Our vibrant, wonderful media industry is getting increasingly complex to maintain the labels/categorisation and segmentation of focus that we have been using for many years. content owners, broadcasters, pay TV service providers (MVPDs) and internet disruptors are all emulating one another, merging to drive scale and connect powerful content rights with span of video distribution and subscription. None of this is very surprising, because what we see is a fundamental shift of how the most premium, professional video is distributed (non premium video exploded specifically because of the low-cost, simple ability to distribute via the internet).

I would like to make a call for action in 2017 - The OTT term is now outdated

All video in the future will be IP delivered; most of this video will be delivered via the internet rather than by private managed IP networks (we could have a deep discussion on what these terms could really mean, technology and business model and even if the internet is unmanaged or not for video). We will see the erosion of dedicated broadcast technology delivery networks for premium video, as linear TV services migrate into vast pools of on-demand choice and new linear ‘channels’ spring-up delivered solely online. This will take many years of course, but the direction is clear.

INTERNET VIDEO

So, I suggest that for 2017 and beyond we refer to ‘internet video’ as our new term to describe all forms of video over IP. We will in our discussions need to focus on the business models of internet video to understand the types, formats, and how premium it is (in the industry some have talked about YouTube as if it were always fix-it guides and cats on treadmills, spoken of Netflix as always premium entertainment, and Facebook video as social chat. These assumptions are already outdated with a huge merging of types of content across a global race to create the new mass-scale video distribution platforms adopted by consumers. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram all have launched live video options).

Internet video will still need some sub-segmentation to understand it, but there isn’t a player across the current television business or the new internet giants that isn’t focussing their resources on winning in internet video. RIP OTT – you served us well.

Comment below if you agree, disagree or want to discuss the nuances of video delivery or the evolving business of television.


Thank you for reading. Simon Frost



Simon Frost is an executive industry leader operating in the converging landscapes of Broadcast Television, Internet and Telecoms. He left Ericsson, where he last served as Global Head, Media Marketing & Communications, at the end of 2016 to"find or create something disruptive, new and truly agile as the converging TMT industry really begins its transformation adopting new cloud-centric technologies and consumers migrate to pure IP delivered, cloud hosted experiences." In addition, he is engaged in Media industry consultancy and commentary


This article was originally published on LinkedIn, and is republished here with the author's permission.

2/22: Verizon, AT&T will both be running 5G tests in Jersey

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In a deal that likely has much to do with the wireless plans of Arris' major cable customers. See my post from last month:
Why Arris might bid on Ruckus Wireless assets? For its own customers, of course

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