Ruckus drives next generation networks with ICX switches
Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company, has announced the availability of its new family of switches in the sub-Saharan African market

Ruckus drives next generation networks with ICX switches

Ruckus Networks, an ARRIS company, has announced the availability of its new family of switches in the sub-Saharan African market to support next-generation network edge and aggregation/core requirements.

The Ruckus ICX family of switches simplify network set-up and management, enhance security, minimise troubleshooting and make upgrades easy to deliver high-performance switching capabilities that meet current and next-generation network demands.

“Enterprise networks have evolved from being utilities used by a limited selection of employees within an organisation to become mission-critical infrastructure that supports almost every business function,” says Riaan Graham, Sales Director for Ruckus Networks, sub-Saharan African.

“The services that networks support are now central to the operation of every function, manufacturing data, stock control, accounting records, customer order management or simply voice and video communication. Everything depends on the network. If the network is going to keep up with the demands of business it must be fast, flexible and secure, but most of all it must be optimised for both performance and cost, the demand for resilient edge networks continues to increase.”

Ruckus has a long history of driving innovation in the networking industry, offering greater levels of performance and efficiency and evolving solutions to meet emerging requirements. The ICX range of switches were designed to deliver the performance of a chassis system in a compact, cost effective and flexible package.

“Wireless applications are growing substantially across Africa and have become critical to unlocking new opportunities and business models. In fact, as more wireless users access cloud and data-intensive applications on their devices, the demand for high-speed, resilient edge networks continues to increase. Couple this with the integration of high performance ICX switching and innovative networking makes for a compelling path for businesses in 2018 and beyond,” said Graham.

“The innovative technology behind the ICX switch family captures all these requirements, enabling users to scale and future-proof their network infrastructure including high-density 802.11ac / 802.11ax Wi-Fi deployments, UHD video streaming, line rate encryption and single point of management to meet the increasing demand of wired and wireless network requirements for the next seven to ten years.”

According to the IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly WLAN Tracker, the worldwide enterprise wireless local area network (WLAN) market grew 6.5% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017 (4Q17) with revenues of US$1.5 billion as organisations continue to realise the benefits and new business opportunities that can be realised by updating and improving their WLAN networks. From a geographic perspective, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) continued the solid growth it saw throughout 2017, growing 11.7% in 4Q17 compared to 4Q16 and 14.4% for the full year – indicating that this market is still in a strong growth phase.

Designed to meet the most demanding technical and commercial requirements Ruckus’s ICX range of edge switches allow the creation of highly scalable and reliable networks that ensure that every enterprise is equipped to support the most demanding applications. And when combined with innovative solutions enterprises can build highly converged networks while minimising operational overheads.

The Ruckus ICX family is also the industry’s first multi-gigabit (IEEE 802.3bz) Ethernet stackable switch with 100GbE connectivity, in-service software upgrades (ISSU) for high availability in a stack, up to 90 watts (IEEE 802.3bt ready) of PoE power per port and dual hot-swappable power supplies and fans for added resiliency.

The ICX 7650 has fixed 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet ports that can be used as uplinks or stacking ports, further supplementing user bandwidth requirements by providing modular uplinks that can scale from 10 to 100 Gigabits. This is all made possible with a fully flexible platform which is common across all architectures negating the need to rip-and replace and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) over the life of the network.

With all the features of the Ruckus ICX switches, these switches are ideal for customers in markets with high-bandwidth requirements including education, hospitality, government and small-to-medium enterprise (SME).

“Integration of ICX into the Ruckus wireless solutions will provide greater opportunities for automation and network visibility and will be critical to providing the high performance wired edge networks that tomorrow’s wireless devices will demand. It’s about building a network foundation that’s ready for the future whenever businesses are – and African businesses are certainly ready,” concludes Graham.

For more information on the Ruckus ICX products as well as the extended features – please visit the ICX product page on the Ruckus website.

 

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