Leading executives, managers, and experts from SMBs and large enterprises share their insights and perspectives with bMighty on a host of IT issues, challenges, and opportunities that small and midsize businesses face.
In the world of computer networking, Lo is an entrepreneurial whiz. She co-founded Centillion Networks, a switching technology startup that Bay Networks bought in 1994 for $100 million. In 1996 she joined Alteon WebSystems, a Web switch company that Nortel Networks bought in 2000 for a cool $7.8 billion. These days, Lo is CEO of Ruckus Wireless, formerly Video54 Technologies. The company was founded in 2004 with a focus on wireless video. Last May, it decided to enter the small and midsize business market with a Wi-Fi product line of access points and controllers called ZoneFlex. bMighty talked to Lo about Ruckus' brief history, its product plans, and its exit strategy.
bMighty: What are the specific Wi-Fi needs of smaller businesses? Explain your company's assertion that before you launched ZoneFlex, none of the Wi-Fi equipment makers was serving the niche between the home office and the larger enterprise.
Lo: Well, when we say small and midsize businesses we tend to think of offices, but the category also includes hotels, vacation resorts, and vacation properties that are run by a franchise. These places have a lot of remote chains, and each of them needs a smallish network of 10 to 30 access points. Consumer-level products aren't scalable; they might be fine for supporting fewer than 20 people, but beyond that you can't scale and control them independently. But buying something big from Aruba [Networks] or Cisco won't work, either, because it's so expensive, and you need an IT team to manage it. A lot of times with the Cisco and Aruba solutions, you have to deal with costs and licenses that make the hardware much more expensive.
Search our database of 200,000 solution- provider locations by business activity, technology, vertical market, and customer size. Find a technology partner NOW.
