Software enhances security and policy management, increases multi-tenant and data plane flexibility 

SAN JOSE, Calif.—April 11, 2017—RUCKUS WIRELESS, a part of BROCADE, today announced the availability of version 3.5 of its SmartZone Operating System (OS). The new release powers the industry’s highest-capacity controller portfolio, including the SmartZone 300 (SZ300) high-scale control and management appliance, which is also being announced today. With more than 30 new features and enhancements, SmartZone OS 3.5 makes it easier than ever for IT to improve the end-user experience and to better align security and policy posture with a diverse user device constituency. New capabilities also enable enterprises and managed service providers to easily and securely implement complex network architectures and multi-tier business models.

The SmartZone portfolio includes high-capacity appliances designed for service provider and large enterprise deployments—SZ300 and virtual SmartZone High-Scale (vSZ-H)—and enterprise-class appliances—SmartZone 100 (SZ100) and virtual SmartZone Essentials (vSZ-E)—designed for mid-sized enterprise networks. The virtual SmartZone Data Plane (vSZ-D) works in conjunction with virtual control and management appliances, enabling a high-throughput distributed data plane. Since their introduction in 2015, SmartZone controllers have been deployed by more than 2,000 enterprise and service provider organizations that are collectively managing more than 600,000 APs.

“Cloud-managed wireless services revenue is growing at 26 percent, far faster than the enterprise WLAN equipment market,” said Rohit Mehra, vice president, network infrastructure, IDC. “WLAN vendors that can build products that enable those service providers to grow their own businesses profitably stand to outperform the market. With its SmartZone portfolio and its latest enhancements, Ruckus is clearly vying to be a dominant vendor in this segment. At the same time, the company is investing in universally critical functionality related to end-user experience management, security and analytics.”

Enhancing End-user Experience Management
As end-user quality-of-service expectations increase, IT departments are increasingly challenged to meet them. SmartZone OS 3.5 provides IT with tools to better ensure quality experience:

• Visual Connection Diagnostics (VCD) enables IT to react in real time to end-user problems, visually troubleshooting the client connection process, pinpointing the failure stage and identifying the likely cause of failure.
• New “super-KPIs,” combined with visual alerts and pivot-table functionality, provide IT with a more effective means of predicting end-user experience degradation, reducing the time IT must spend on identifying systemic failures.
• Near real-time push-streaming enables IT to effectively respond to rapidly deteriorating network conditions by allowing third-party or custom-built analytics tools to consume key performance indicators (KPIs) with no delay, no fidelity loss and no need for IT to create a firewall pinhole.

Creating More Flexible Security and Policy Management
Ensuring that the network, devices and users are protected without compromising expected service and access levels is critically important. The new release helps IT address these challenges more easily:

• SmartZone integration with Ruckus Cloudpath security and policy management software allows IT to create a practically unlimited number of user and device roles, enabling user-specific VLAN, access control and bandwidth attributes. This capability enables IT to segment the network based on real security and policy needs, rather than on a one-size-fits-all basis.
• Usability improvements to Ruckus Dynamic Pre-Shared Key (DPSK) technology include a group DPSK function and, with Cloudpath integration, automatic key distribution to end users. Group DPSK is designed to make it easier for organizations with “headless” Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as printers and Apple TVs to manually distribute keys to these devices by enabling groups of device types to use a common DPSK key.

Enabling More Sophisticated Business and Deployment Models
The latest SmartZone release further enhances multi-tenant and data plane functionality and flexibility for service providers that host private clouds and for large enterprises and educational institutions:

• Multi-tenant partner domain segmentation allows service providers that operate private clouds to establish secure, isolated operating domains for their non-hosting managed service provider clients. This new capability, combined with existing domain and zone functionality, enables the private-cloud service provider to support any single-tier or dual-tier managed services business model, while meeting stringent operational and security requirements.
• The zone affinity feature in the vSZ-D provides a common data plane to distributed sites, allowing customers to maintain a centralized data architecture in the event of a WLAN vendor change. Managed service providers can use the same capability to allow their customers to tunnel guest traffic away from their local area network (LAN).
• Native DHCP/NAT functionality in the vSZ-D simplifies deployment complexity by enabling high-performance DHCP assignment in a centralized or distributed network context without the need for third-party DHCP/NAT servers.
• The vSZ-D enables Layer 3 roaming without the need for a dedicated mobility controller. Parameters are defined just once in a centrally located vSZ-H/E instance. Distributed vSZ-D instances automatically establish tunnels between themselves. Roaming devices maintain their original IP address, ensuring session persistence for sensitive applications such as voice.

“With Ruckus’ latest version of its SmartZone control and management software, browsing across the user interface is straightforward and simple, with the ability to access configuration and monitoring on a single page,” said Yves Premel-Cabic, head of engineering, WiFirst. “Ruckus now goes far beyond its competitors, with call-flow diagnostics for client association issues and crystal clear technical data. By combining it with the Ruckus SmartCell Insight platform, we will now be able to enjoy state-of-the-art analytics. vSZ 3.5 is now the best carrier-grade Wi-Fi management solution, and WiFirst’s engineers and technicians can’t wait to upgrade to this major release.”

“SmartZone allows service providers and large organizations to easily deploy high-scale, multi-site, multi-region WLANs while practically eliminating the usual costs associated with data plane scaling,” said Greg Beach, vice president of product management at Ruckus Wireless. “With this latest release, we’ve made SmartZone even more compelling for service providers of all kinds, while giving IT in every organization easy-to-use tools that allow them to more effectively manage the entire end-user experience from service quality to security and policy.”

To learn more about Ruckus Wireless’s SmartZone portfolio, visit HTTPS://WWW.RUCKUSWIRELESS.COM/PRODUCTS/SYSTEM-MANAGEMENT-CONTROL/SMARTZONE.

About the Ruckus Wireless Business Unit
The RUCKUS WIRELESS Business Unit of Brocade delivers simply better wireless networking—and now wired switching as well—for enterprise, service provider, government and small business customers worldwide. Ruckus is focused on technology innovation, partner ecosystems and customer service—yielding the best possible wireless or wired experience for the most challenging indoor and outdoor environments. Its SMART WI-FI platform delivers scalable, high-performance Wi-Fi with simplified control and management for on-premise and cloud-based Wi-Fi deployments, along with new services for secure on-boarding, policy management, location services and analytics that enable new business opportunities. THE RUCKUS ICX^® 7000 FAMILY SWITCHES provide flexible scalability and simplified management, meeting the needs of businesses and organizations of all types and sizes.

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SAN JOSE, CA–(Marketwired – Mar 28, 2017) – Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced the BROCADE® G610, a no-compromise storage switch for always-on connectivity to the all-flash data center. This breakthrough switch leverages the power of BROCADE GEN 6 FIBRE CHANNEL TECHNOLOGY, providing up to 32 Gbps performance, unmatched simplicity and enterprise-class functionality that helps organizations adapt to dynamic workloads and new demands for always-on business operations.

Brocade also announced expanded monitoring capabilities through Brocade Fabric Vision technology with the availability of VM Insight. VM Insight delivers proactive visibility into the health and performance of individual virtual machines (VMs) to help administrators uncover issues before applications are affected.

Digital transformation, the rapid adoption of flash storage and the emergence of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) are driving new requirements for a modern infrastructure that can optimize application performance and adapt to evolving data center needs. To meet those needs, Gen 6 Fibre Channel SAN solutions are designed to provide digital enterprises with superior performance, non-stop availability and built-in NVMe capabilities for all-flash data centers.

“The Brocade G610 switch and VM Insight reinforce Brocade’s continued commitment to Fibre Channel innovation to help customers derive more value from their applications and infrastructure,” said Jack Rondoni, senior vice president of storage networking at Brocade. “Together with our partner ecosystem, Brocade is making it easy and affordable to deploy Fibre Channel solutions while extending monitoring capabilities in Fabric Vision technology so customers can have unparalleled visibility of VM-level application performance within the storage network.”

The Brocade G610 is an entry-level switch designed for a variety of environments ranging from small shared storage fabrics to network edge deployments in data centers. It offers high performance, proven reliability and affordable access to industry-leading Gen 6 Fibre Channel storage networking technology. To support their ever-evolving storage environments, organizations can start with eight ports and grow on demand with up to 24 ports per switch. In addition, the Brocade G610 switch is easy to use and install, with a point-and-click user interface that simplifies deployment to save time.

“The use of all-flash arrays for consolidation of mission-critical primary storage workloads is increasing rapidly, and by 2020 IDC predicts that these types of systems will drive over 80 percent of all primary storage revenues,” said Eric Burgener, research director, storage, IDC. “Flash’s ability to support much denser workload consolidation is demanding higher-performance host connections, and Brocade’s new Gen 6 Fibre Channel portfolio provides that bandwidth with a proven, trusted and highly secure protocol.”

“Whole-brain imaging is critical to our research but advances in imaging and microscopy place new demands on our network and storage infrastructure every day,” said Jake Carroll, senior information technology manager of research, The University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute. “Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions massively boost data transfer speeds enabling scientists to maximize the benefits of increased image resolution and high data sampling rates.”

The entire Brocade Gen 6 product family with Fabric Vision technology now includes VM Insight to help organizations achieve greater visibility into VM-level application performance. Using integrated sensors, this new capability allows administrators to monitor VM statistics and quickly identify abnormal VM behaviors. This facilitates troubleshooting and fault isolation while providing intelligence for early detection of application performance degradations to help support critical service level agreements. VM Insight extends and complements the automated monitoring, diagnostic and management capabilities enabled by Fabric Vision technology.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is shipping the Brocade G610 switch today. “The ability to protect, analyze and transport data reliably and affordably is an enormous competitive advantage,” said Marty Lans, senior director and general manager of Storage Connectivity, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “The combination of HPE 3PAR and Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions has the potential to transform businesses of all shapes and sizes, enabling them to derive maximum benefit from investments in technologies like flash, NVMe, cloud and virtualization. The introduction of the new SN3600B Fibre Channel switch bolsters our current Gen 6 Fibre Channel portfolio with a new offering to put Fibre Channel SAN within reach of even more customers.”

Supporting Quotes

• “Dell EMC is committed to delivering all-flash storage solutions that are foundational to our customers’ IT transformation. Our continued collaboration with Brocade to provide Connectrix Fibre Channel SAN solutions enables organizations to combine the speed and efficiency of all-flash storage with the trusted reliability and availability demanded by today’s data center. The availability of VM Insight also brings a new level of visibility into the storage performance of individual virtual machines, offering customers another means to monitor and ensure availability of their applications.” – Greg Findlen, vice president, Integrated Offerings, Storage Division, Dell EMC
• “Brocade is always pushing the boundaries of technological innovation and exploring new ways to help their customers do more. With its Gen 6 Fibre Channel portfolio, Brocade is bringing even more value to the SAN market. We’re already seeing an enormous demand for long-distance 32 Gbps Fibre Channel services across a number of data center interconnect projects. Using higher port speeds is key for helping our customers increase efficiency and throughput while at the same time lowering cost and complexity.” – Henning Hinderthür, vice president, Product Line Management, Optical Transport, ADVA Optical Networking
• “The Brocade G610 switch brings Fibre Channel networking, which is purpose-built for storage, to an affordable price point without compromise for the all-flash data center. Combining the Brocade G610 switch with Emulex’s Gen 6 Fibre Channel HBAs will offer customers the industry’s most affordable and highest-performing storage network solution.” – Jeff Hoogenboom, General Manager, Emulex Connectivity Division, Broadcom Limited
• “Driven by a combination of reliability, value, innovation and investment protection, Fibre Channel continues to be the go-to technology choice for enterprise storage. The Brocade G610 switch delivers an attractive cost of entry for smaller SAN deployments and edge expansion. And coupling QLogic 2700 Series Gen 6 Fibre Channel Adapters with Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel switches delivers innovation on multiple fronts, including end-to-end visibility into VM storage performance with VM tagging, and future-proofing for next-generation flash deployments with FC-NVMe.” – Vikram Karvat, vice president of marketing, Fibre Channel Storage Group, Cavium QLogic
• “Fujitsu storage solutions offer the advantages of ultra-fast, all-flash arrays that set performance records. The new Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel switch will allow customers to further optimize the storage performance of their physical and virtual infrastructure.” – Kazuhiko Endo, senior vice president, Head of Data Center Platform Business Unit, Fujitsu Limited
• “H3C is at the forefront of modernizing data centers so they can manage modern workloads while ensuring high availability. Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel storage networks complement our enterprise storage solutions because they are highly efficient and reliable, and give organizations tools like VM Insight to proactively monitor application performance in each virtual machine.” – Dr. Li Li, vice president, general manager of product sales and marketing, H3C
• “To support their digital transformation initiatives, organizations are deploying flash to build the right application foundation and accelerate innovation. Our innovative storage solutions combined with the new Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel switch brings data center efficiency, scale and visibility through SAN management tools such as VM insight, enabling our customers to achieve automated and agile IT.” – Bob Madaio, vice president, Infrastructure and Solutions Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems
• “Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Brocade are working together to simplify the task of automating and orchestrating SAN provisioning while improving visibility to the overall Fibre Channel SAN conditions with unique tools like HPE’s SmartSAN and Brocade’s Fabric Vision technology. Today’s data centers are experiencing virtualized application growth at unprecedented rates, making it essential for IT managers to maintain optimal SAN performance all the way to the VM level. To this end, HPE plans to provide VM-level visibility with support for Brocade’s VM Insight in a future SmartSAN release.” – Rupin Mohan, R&D chief technologist, HPE StoreFabric, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• “With superb stability, outstanding performance and future-oriented convergence, Huawei’s storage arrays help customers support their most demanding application needs. Brocade’s latest innovation in Gen 6 Fibre Channel can be leveraged by organizations that are deploying flash in their data centers today. With the availability of VM Insight, even the performance of individual virtual machines is monitored and optimized.” – Guangbin Meng, president of storage product line, Huawei
• “As an enterprise storage leader that pushes the envelope on scalability, INFINIDAT is delighted to collaborate with Brocade to provide the next Fibre Channel innovations and we welcome the opportunity to leverage the new Brocade G610 switch for our customers. We view VM Insight as a major step towards providing end-to-end synergy between hypervisors, Fibre Channel fabrics and storage, which will enable better insights and faster troubleshooting.” – Jacob Broido, chief product officer, INFINIDAT
• “Organizations rely on Kaminario’s all-flash arrays to deliver performance and cost efficiency with the ability to flexibly scale to meet the demands of today’s complex storage environments. We continue to adopt the latest technology innovations for our customers, working with Brocade to provide Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions. The unprecedented visibility enabled by VM Insight allows us to deliver high-performance storage solutions for mission-critical applications running on virtualized infrastructure.” – Marty Sanders, chief technology officer for Americas, Kaminario
• “Lenovo and Brocade are partnering to bring to market reliable, high-performing and scalable Fibre Channel SAN solutions. The availability of Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions in combination with differentiated management tools like VM Insight are a perfect fit for our diverse customer base who are investing in flash storage, converged systems, bandwidth-hungry applications and ever-increasing VM densities.” – Kamran Amini, general manager, Server Business Unit, Lenovo Data Center Group
• “In a market where every industry and interaction is being digitized, data has quickly become the lifeblood of business. It is critical that these digital enterprises have fast, continuous access to their information to enable new business opportunities and improve competitiveness. The combination of NetApp’s industry-leading flash solutions with the new Brocade G610 switch gives customers an affordable, enterprise-class solution that delivers a consistent application experience to any user, from any device, anytime.” – Octavian Tanase, senior vice president, ONTAP, NetApp
• “Nimble Storage helps organizations build an all-flash data center that optimizes performance, capacity and cost for every application. We are excited that the new Brocade G610 Fibre Channel switch offers valuable Gen 6 Fabric Vision features such as VM Insight, which deliver a set of visibility tools that complement Nimble’s InfoSight and VMVision.” – Gary O’Neil, vice president of alliances, Nimble Storage
• “Pure Storage all-flash arrays have the speed, simplicity and scale to power mission-critical workloads for organizations of all sizes. Brocade Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions deliver the proven reliability our customers depend on, and the new VM insight brings performance optimization and enhanced visibility of individual virtual machines providing customers with more knowledge about their data center environment.” – Matt Kixmoeller, vice president of products, Pure Storage
• “Tegile all-flash arrays are ideal for latency-sensitive, business-critical workloads such as online transaction processing, real-time analytics, decision support and data warehousing. Providing the Gen 6 Fibre Channel performance and extended visibility across the storage fabric with VM Insight, Brocade is helping customers reap the benefits of a high-performance infrastructure.” – Rob Commins, vice president of corporate marketing, Tegile
• “Vexata’s mission is to deliver a fast, simple and transformative data infrastructure for all modern applications. With Brocade’s Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions paired with Vexata’s Real Time Architecture, enterprises will have access to the most efficient shared data storage infrastructure at a performance never seen before. In addition, the Vexata array is being fully qualified with Brocade’s Gen 6 Fibre Channel portfolio providing customers the confidence that they are deploying the most modern data infrastructure available today.” – Zahid Hussain, chief executive officer, Vexata
• “End-to-end visibility into the application performance of individual virtual machines has never been more important in today’s increasingly complex IT operations. VMware’s support for Brocade Fabric Vision technology with VM Insight helps organizations obtain the visibility they need to properly manage infrastructure sizing, conduct capacity planning and monitor performance operations. VMware is excited to support a solution that helps manage the growing demands of data centers.” – Lee Caswell, vice president, Storage & Availability, VMware

Availability
The Brocade G610 switch with Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology is available now through Brocade and its channel partners. Other Brocade OEM partners plan to start shipping the new switch in the second quarter of 2017. VM Insight is available today.

Additional Resources

• Blog: AFFORDABLE GEN 6, FLASH-READY WITHOUT COMPROMISE
• BROCADE G610 SWITCH EXPLAINER VIDEO
• VM INSIGHT EXPLAINER VIDEO
• MAXIMIZE THE ALL-FLASH DATA CENTER WITH BROCADE GEN 6 FIBRE CHANNEL

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