As organisations attempt to optimise network health, centralising IT functions and eliminating costs is a critical initial step. Reinette Grobler, Channel Manager at Ruckus SSA, tells Intelligent CIO Africa about how Ruckus’s approach differs from other vendors and how their dependable and secure technologies set them apart.
How does the cloud provide IT teams with visibility and transparency?
Ruckus Cloud is an AI-enabled Network Management-as-a-Service platform. It is single pane management for all your wired and wireless networks. It radically simplifies wired and wireless network administrative tasks. This includes day-to-day management, setting up new venues and guest networks and using multi-site management tools.
As the network grows it becomes more complex, using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ruckus cloud provides you with the tools to manage this effectively. Automatic detection of service incidents is classified by severity, identifying root causes and recommendations for remediation.
RUCKUS Analytics continuously monitors network health, measuring against SLA thresholds. With Ruckus Cloud you can speed up provisioning, management and control via intuitive intent-based workflows. Restful Open APIs allow automation using programming languages of your choice. The native mobile app allows provisioning, management and monitoring of the whole network. This improves responsiveness to business while reducing IT teams’ overheads.
What are the benefits of implementing a cloud solution?
With Ruckus Cloud you have insight into your network health with a single pane of glass in a real-time dashboard. Zero-touch provisioning allows for deployment across multiple locations without the need for additional on-site IT resources. Each controller, switch and AP is always up-to-date with the latest security patches and feature sets.
Scalability allows for up and down scaling on your network management solution with no compromise on user experience and worrying about incurring additional costs by streamlining IT Management, training and helpdesk operations, driving down the cost of ownership.
What role does ML and AI play in companies having effective cloud solutions?
RUCKUS Cloud includes RUCKUS Analytics making use of ML and AI to allow for better management of your network and SLA thresholds set by yourself. Gaining visibility into core metrics, for example, connection success, client throughput and more. Automatic behaviour establishment of a normal range of behaviour provides for network assurance.
ML identifies service incidents related to connectivity, infrastructure and performance which affect user experience. AI classifies incidents by severity level with duration and the number of devices affected – allowing ease of reference for critical issues to be resolved first. Simply put, RUCKUS Cloud enables you to meet business demands’ SLAs.
What can organisations do to maximise their user-experience, operation efficiency and capacity planning?
Companies can consider reducing the costs of deployment of new hardware-based sites in new areas. Another area could be looking for ways to simplify connectivity utilising fibre networks. Finally future-proofing is an excellent way to ensure new technologies are integrated seamlessly. Ruckus APs are known for exceptional Wi-Fi performance under challenging conditions.
Non-blocking and low latency of multigigabit RUCKUS ICX Switches ensures magnificent throughput for the most demanding applications. RUCKUS Cloud allows you to address end-user experience challenges from both angles. This combination gives you a rock-solid foundation ensuring an excellent end-user experience.
Can you tell us about key network issues decision-makers are facing and how these can be tackled?
Enterprise networks are becoming more critical and complex. It is time-consuming for IT teams to manage the network effectively with multiple consoles, constant updating and patching. Instead of actively managing, IT teams are forced to react when users grow frustrated. Network professionals spend too much time troubleshooting and cannot proactively identify network issues.
This means networks are becoming more complex each day with new network protocols, new applications and new devices. IT help desks become inundated with service assurance issues and more teams need to be deployed to remote sites for troubleshooting. An unwanted consequence can be unplanned OPEX and end-user dissatisfaction.
Ruckus Cloud can overcome this complexity with ML and AI – simplicity with no additional equipment on site, reliability of cloud grade, redundant DC infrastructure, scalability allowing to add licensing as you grow without adding hardware, security with regular and automatic bug fixes, updating of latest features and on-going development. Providing end-users with a consistently wonderful experience that is dependable and secure.
How does converging wireless and wireline networks help eliminate costs and complexity and improve reliability?
RUCKUS Cloud enables IT teams to deploy, control and manage both wired and wireless networks simultaneously and directly. IT no longer needs to deploy a separate network management system to manage its switches and access points. IT teams can control and manage through a single pane console both wired and wireless networks. Provisioning delays and errors are eliminated through a common automated discovery process.
Can you tell us more about RUCKUS’ cloud offerings and how they benefit businesses?
RUCKUS Cloud offers easy management and troubleshooting. More efficiency and better productivity are top priorities. RUCKUS Cloud WI-FI is based on a pay-as-you-grow model which increases capacity without the need to add physical or virtual appliances which require maintenance. Security patches are employed in the cloud allowing systems to be carefully monitored. Another plus point is no hardware configuration which means quick deployment.
Another advantage is the instant availability of new features is always-on, meaning that IT Teams do not need to expend time to ensure the latest features and patches are installed.
Finally, 24/7 support with High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) ensure we drive down CAPEX costs.
How does RUCKUS Cloud empower managers to assess, identify and address network issues?
Using advanced AI and patented ML techniques, RUCKUS Cloud gives you the troubleshooting tools to react quickly to service-affecting issues and to stop network anomalies from rising to the service-affecting level.
How do you see ML and AI evolving in the future and what can companies do to embrace these changes to benefit users and their ecosystem of partners in the long-term?
ML and AI are fast becoming critical tools for enterprises. There is so much data today and it is changing rapidly. AI is great at spotting trends and patterns in seemingly unrelated data, and ML feeds AI. This helps improve security and increase customer satisfaction, using one’s enterprise data effectively is only possible when you use these advanced technologies.
Media/PR Contact Info – Shadean Vermeulen, Marketing Manager SSA,
