A familiar name was missing from yesterday’s news about Arris’ $800 million acquisition of Brocade’s Ruckus Wireless division and ICX switch businesses. Ruckus founder and CEO Selina Lo will retire in May as part of her employment contract with Brocade. Ruckus COO Dan Rabinovitsj will lead Ruckus’ business as a separate unit within Arris once that acquisition closes.
As a refresher, Brocade purchased Ruckus for $1.2 billion in April 2016. Then in November, Broadcom agreed to acquire Brocade for $5.9 billion. Earlier this week, Arris said it will acquire Ruckus and the ICX line from Broadcom, but it’s contingent upon the closing of Broadcom’s purchase of Brocade.
Lo’s LegacyLo is highly regarded in Silicon Valley for her ability to identify promising new markets and build startups that thrive. Before starting Ruckus, Lo worked as vice president of marketing and product management for startup Alteon Websystems, which was sold to Nortel Networks for $7.8 billion. Before that, she co-founded Centillion Networks, which was sold to Bay Networks.
Ruckus made a name for itself in the WiFi world for its video-grade, high-performance wireless networking product that used a proprietary multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology.
Recently, Lo has been a champion of OpenG, a technology that combines coordinated shared spectrum, such as that in the 3.5 GHz band in the U.S., with neutral host-capable small cells to provide in-building cellular coverage.
Ruckus hopes its ties with enterprises and service providers can drive adoption of OpenG. And it has some powerful partners including Google, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm, and Federated Wireless.
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