SUNNYVALE, CA — MARCH 4, 2014 — Ruckus Wireless, Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) today announced that Deep Blue Communications, a national managed Wi-Fi service provider, has selected and is the first to deploy the Ruckus SmartCell™ Gateway (SCG) 200 to deliver private cloud managed wireless LAN (WLAN) services to a range of customers across different vertical markets.
Specializing in the hospitality, retail and public venue markets, Deep Blue has transformed its business model from a traditional value-added reseller into a full-fledged managed service provider using the Ruckus SCG as the foundation. Deep Blue provides turnkey wireless solutions that include: onsite deployment and around the clock network management as well as guest support and troubleshooting from its network operations centers in Albany, New York, which handle over 1.5 million authentications each month. With the Ruckus SCG, Deep Blue is now providing managed Wi-Fi services from a single platform to a myriad of hotel chains such as Wyndham, Marriott and others, as well as retail customers, and plans on migrating many of its high-capacity public venues like Monmouth Park, Sam Houston and Saratoga Racetracks to the Ruckus SCG in the near future.
“As our business has grown, we’ve been looking for better ways to streamline the traditional wireless LAN deployment and management model by leveraging the Cloud and all the flexibility that comes with it without being dependent on some third-party Cloud provider,” said Brian Epstein, president and CEO of Deep Blue Communications. “What’s different is that the Ruckus SCG gives us the ability to offer our own private Cloud managed wireless services in a way not previously possible with other equipment and still provide the best Wi-Fi access services available on the market.”
Epstein noted that the Ruckus SCG enables the ability to scale to multiple customers on a single platform that supports tens of thousands of Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi access points. Separate zones, provisioning rules and configuration templates defined within the Ruckus SCG streamline WLAN administration. Additionally, Deep Blue customers are provided their own discrete view of their infrastructure through a custom portal that delivers detailed reports and wireless analytics such as unique client activity, signal to noise ratios for each client, client activity per access point (AP), link activity and other wireless traffic statistics.
Enabling Managed Private Cloud Wi-Fi Services with the Ruckus SCG
With the Ruckus SCG, channel partners and operators can now host Smart Wi-Fi services for both large enterprise deployments and smaller distributed sites, providing Wi-Fi services and simplified deployment that enables a recurring revenue model, lower CAPEX and TCO.
Designed specifically for carrier-class deployments, the Ruckus SCG obviates the need for on-premises WLAN controllers. With the SCG, Deep Blue is better able to serve multiple clients from a single platform with full active/active redundancy for maximum uptime.
“We see the SCG as a real game changer in the market for delivering reliable Wi-Fi services more efficiently and at a lower cost,” continued Epstein. “It’s the next logical step in managed wireless networks and has fundamentally changed the way we deploy and support Wi-Fi networks.”
Epstein concluded, “We now have a single point of management for all of our customers and can offer Wi-Fi services through our own cloud, which we completely control being independent of someone else’s service. The combination of simplified management and streamlined deployment with the best Wi-Fi access points on site is a powerful combination that today is unmatched within the industry.”
Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi access points are shipped to customers and easily installed. Once installed, Ruckus access points automatically connect to the managed Ruckus SCG and are dynamically configured with the requisite settings for each site. Using provisioning rules, access points are automatically placed into the correct zone for each customer.
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint™ equipment by the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) to support Hotspot 2.0 deployments, the Ruckus SCG 200 is a unique NEBS-3/ETSI compliant solution, offering one of the industry’s most scalable WLAN controller architectures, through a distinctive, dynamically scalable clustering model that maintains carrier-class availability and resiliency through N+1 redundancy and hot-swappable components. A Ruckus SCG cluster can support tens of thousands of Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi APs and hundreds of thousands of concurrent Wi-Fi subscribers.
Additionally, the Ruckus SCG 200 carrier-class element management system (EMS) can be integrated into an operator’s central NMS via standard data exchange interfaces. The Ruckus SCG also provides feature-rich management, including control over the self-organizing smart networking behaviors such as RF management, load balancing, adaptive meshing, and backhaul optimization.
ABOUT DEEP BLUE COMMUNICATIONS
Headquartered in Latham, NY and with satellite offices around the United States, Deep Blue has been an industry leader for more than 10 years, designing, installing and managing Wi-Fi networks. Deep Blue has made the INC 5000 list of the fastest growing companies the last two years running and has emerged as the leader in meeting the needs of the converged property, integrating hospitality, retail, and entertainment services. In 2012, Deep Blue was chosen as the only certified Wi-Fi vendor for the Wyndham Worldwide Hotel Group, and in 2013 became an approved Marriott vendor as well. Deep Blue is also recommended by many other prestigious hospitality flags such as Hyatt Place, IHG, Best Western and Choice Hotels. With a Passion for Wi-Fi, Deep Blue is helping businesses all across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, to elevate the Wi-Fi experience for guests, while increasing operating efficiencies for the business. For more information, visit https://www.deepbluecommunications.com.
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