In our 87th proper RUCKCast, Jim and John bring on Tim Dyer, VP extraordinaire at RUCKUS. Tim deals with our Network as a Service side of the house, among many other duties and responsibilities.
More importantly, he taught us that heavy networking does exist, and it is not a form of engineering shaming.
To watch Tim's interview with Zeus Kerravala about NaaS, follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ6dDjzpZXQ
To read the blog written by Zeus Kerravala on the RUCKUS Networks website, follow this link https://www.ruckusnetworks.com/blog/2023/new-survey-reveals-when-it-comes-to-5g-and-wi-fi-enterprises-want-both-but-unified-management-is-necessary-for-success/
Intro music by Alex Grohl, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsRWpx8VJ_E
and
https://pixabay.com/users/alexgrohl-25289918/
In our 87th proper RUCKCast, Jim and John bring on Tim Dyer, VP extraordinaire at RUCKUS. Tim deals with our Network as a Service side of the house, among many other duties and responsibilities.
More importantly, he taught us that heavy networking does exist, and it is not a form of engineering shaming.
To watch Tim's interview with Zeus Kerravala about NaaS, follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ6dDjzpZXQ
To read the blog written by Zeus Kerravala on the RUCKUS Networks website, follow this link https://www.ruckusnetworks.com/blog/2023/new-survey-reveals-when-it-comes-to-5g-and-wi-fi-enterprises-want-both-but-unified-management-is-necessary-for-success/
Intro music by Alex Grohl, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsRWpx8VJ_E
and
https://pixabay.com/users/alexgrohl-25289918/
John Deegan: Good afternoon, Mr. Palmer. How are you, sir?
Jim Palmer: I'm doing good. You normally say good morning.
John Deegan: Well, breaking the fourth wall again, it's evening for me, I know it's afternoon for you and for our guest, but it's like pitch black in my basement right now, so I'm going with good evening, because I have no lights on, so.
Jim Palmer: Thanks to the time change, like it's going to get, it's black in my office with a window in a couple of hours. So
John Deegan: I'm already there.
Jim Palmer: I have no idea what's happening. I'm all just, I'm just all confused.
John Deegan: You're winging it. But it's good. It's good. We have we do have another special guest today.
Jim Palmer: Is he that?
John Deegan: So I figured. He is that special. And we can, we can, we can definitely say that, I think. But why don't you, you want to do the intro? We'll get him on, we'll get rolling.
Jim Palmer: Wait, we just started. How are we, how are we already talking to, we're breaking our rule.
John Deegan: No, we're not breaking a rule. We're trying not to go off the rails.
It's the New Year's resolution a month early, month and a half early.
Jim Palmer: I don't know.
John Deegan: That's a trainwreck instead of a...
Jim Palmer: Yeah, this isn't off the rails, this is off the rails and hanging a hard left. So we, I guess, I guess special is we have we have Tim on, and Tim has like some senior VP title thing, I don't know what it is, I don't pay attention to titles.
Odd, but yeah, so we have Tim. on to talk about stuff that as soon as I find my notes, we'll be able to actually talk about normally. So um, so while I'm looking for my stuff, Tim, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to everybody? And... Yay!
Tim Dyer: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Hey, my name is Tim Dyer.
I'm I'm here at RUCKUS with my brethren and and I'm responsible for a couple of different things or a few different things here. I'm first responsible for our multi access public and private network initiative, as well as our Network as a Service initiative. And then lastly, also responsible for our vertical markets and our go to market in that, in that domain.
Jim Palmer: Thanks. I love the fact you didn't have a title. So we're just not even going to, we're not even going to issue a title at this point. You're just going to be Tim.
Tim Dyer: Yeah. Perfect.
Jim Palmer: Well, the, the one thing you said was so long, I only got like halfway through it. And then I was like, wait, what did he say? So anytime you get like titles like that, I'm Like, yeah, you're just Tim.
John Deegan: This is why I get to re listen to it later. Cause then I can pause it and absorb. And yes, I really do listen to the podcast again for our audience.
Jim Palmer: But you, so Tim, you said something and we're just going to jump right into this. You're talking about the multi access something or another, and then the Network as a Service.
The Network as a Service thing. Or I guess, I guess multi access now that you say it. It all kind of fits into something that I was reading recently on the RUCKUS blogs about Network as a Service and, let me, I actually did pull it up. Actually, I have no idea where we're going with the network or with the multi access stuff, but it kind of fits because I, I see 5G in the title.
John Deegan: 5G and Wi-Fi, right?
Jim Palmer: Yeah, it's 5G and Wi-Fi, so that, so... For everybody else who hasn't read this blog can you kind of give us your take on the problem and this, the RUCKUS solution to the multi access whatever’s and the, and the NaaS’ and the everything as a service? Can you kind of give us your take on kind of what is that problem?
And then, you know, as the person heading that up, what is the, what is the RUCKUS solution to this problem?
Tim Dyer: Sure. So, I'll say a couple things. First thing I'll say is, we are riffing a little bit on our overall marketing initiative. So, our marketing initiative is to build purpose-built networks. And I recently spoke, I spoke a couple times on this topic, and I stole something from my 17-year-old son, and the something I stole from him was, what does that even mean?
What does a purpose-built network even mean? And, and when you, when you look at customer requirements today, it's a multitude of things, right? Obviously, they have... Multi access, and in this context, it's really, do I need cellular connectivity? Is Wi-Fi good enough? And, and as the head of this initiative, it's kind of that tip of the spear where we go in and we identify four people and articulate to people when and why they would use a particular method for a connection.
So, you know, is it a, is it a requirement? Do they have a requirement for heavy mobility? And when I say heavy mobility, I'm not talking people walking around. I'm talking about robots that are moving at 14 feet per second throughout a distribution center. And, and that if they don't communicate efficiently and effectively and in the.
Prescribed amount of time for the application, they'll actually run into each other when they get to an aisle. So, fun stuff. And, and as we head down that path, and as Wi-Fi becomes even more sophisticated, and the reach gets greater, and the, and the latency. is minimized. It becomes more and more important for us to not just design our design those networks correctly, but to understand them in the context of what's available in the overall market.
Hopefully there's an answer in there.
Jim Palmer: You know, it's, it's funny because I was actually having this conversation with somebody last week and we were talking about especially location. You know, Wi-Fi location has always been a big deal. I remember doing it in my last job, but I remember watching, this was a few years ago, I was at a conference and somebody was talking about using Wi-Fi for location and he said it's really great, you know, when you're thinking about like, you know, how many people are in a space or, you know, are And I know a lot of LPVs will use Wi-Fi to figure out, like, hey, where are all the devices?
Like, which gate are they all piled up at? You know, it's like, all of a sudden, we have a thousand devices at gate five and we only have two devices at gate one. It's like somebody needs to go out there and tell them, hey, everybody go down to gate one. And it's like, and that location stuff really works for that.
But I heard somebody that you're talking about robots. And I thought it was interesting you went to that because, you know, it's like the Wi-Fi location will tell you where the Wi-Fi device was, say 10 seconds ago or five seconds ago, which is fine for people, but for robots, you know, we're knowing where that robot was five seconds ago when he's moving 14 feet per second, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you're 50 feet down the road or down the aisle and you're colliding.
And so it's. It is kind of an interesting thing when you, when you talked about heavy mobility and, and sort of that speed thing which was really, I guess, my first introduction to it. So I'm glad you kind of went there,
Jim Palmer: John.
John Deegan: I, I, I hear heavy mobility and I'm thinking I'm walking around, like I'm not thinking about robots.
Jim Palmer: Well, some of those robots are heavy.
John Deegan: Well, that's true, too. Thank you. Thank you. Made me a little bit less self-conscious. And so I know one of the popular things that people talk about a lot is, and I used to hear this a lot and I would roll my eyes in a previous life, when somebody was like, 5G, and I actually worked for a VP who, was like, 5G is going to replace Wi-Fi.
In a couple of years, we're never going to have Wi-Fi anymore. And everybody else that was in the room that knew Wi-Fi was like, yeah, no, that's not going to happen. So, I think we can put that argument to rest about, One versus the other, not necessarily, I think they both have a place, honestly. I think it's more of a collaboration than a one versus the other.
There's nothing wrong with having more than one tool in the tool belt. I swear I'm going somewhere with this. So, as we accept that new reality, right, that we've got a couple different flavors of connectivity to bring to bear, this brings up challenges for the network architects and the day to day administration of those networks.
What kind of challenges are we seeing? Somebody is running, you know, Network as a Service and things like that. What are we, what's the day to day like?
Tim Dyer: If, if I'm a traditional IT person, I likely don't even know what KPIs to apply to my cellular environment. I don't understand it. I don't understand what a packet core is in 4G.
I don't understand really the, uh, the containerized environment that's been created in 5G. There's so much that I don't understand, and I don't want to understand, and maybe I don't even need to understand it, and what that does is it provides a multitude of opportunities on the, on the vendor and partner side, as well as the manufacturing side.
And I, I read a report recently, and I can't remember who published this thing, we'll have to look it up. But the analyst said that, that enterprises believe they can save as much as 30 percent in time as they manage converged environments if they have a converged platform to manage from. And, and what's interesting, there's a lot of things that are interesting about that statement.
Number one is... We're measuring things in time instead of money. And I'm a, I'm a believer that time isn't money. I'm a believer in time is time. I can make more money, but I can't make more time. So, so I think that that consolidated management. Swivel chair problem needs to be ameliorated. And understanding, you know, Jim touched on it too, an understanding of, you know, talk about mobility and location and, okay, so what's one network say versus another network?
And it gives me another data source. You know, one of the... One of the many beauties of our industry is we kick off so much data in the devices that we deploy and employ, that that we can take all that data and we can, we can provide a unique That's Characterization, characterization of it and provide unique insights as a direct result of that.
So, so that's one thing I think that's really interesting. And then I had some other, something else that was really interesting, but now I forgot what it was.
John Deegan: I mean, if it comes up to let us know, we we certainly don't mind having, we take a lot of left turns.
Jim Palmer: So it's interesting, you know, you talked about the swivel chair thing, because that has been something that I know.
A lot of people have been, you know, it's always that thing of focusing on. I mean, honestly, that's one of the reasons why I joined RUCKUS originally was just because of, of how I was watching an administrator go through a Wi-Fi network. And, you know, this was four or five years ago and she was just able to, everything that she needed, she was able to click on.
And it, it just felt very smooth and it just flowed and everything like that. And it was sort of like, all of a sudden it's like, Hey, there's, there's a swivel chair is, is gone. And my dog is getting angry at that because. Now we don't have swivel chairs apparently, but, and, and so you were talking about the, you know, the need to understand the KPIs for, you know, then, then they're like, Hey, I don't even need to under, I don't even know if I need to understand it.
But when we start talking about how we make these things converge together between Wi-Fi and the, and the cellular, whether it's. Yeah, with private LTE and stuff. I mean, how does, how do, how do we handle that? What is our answer for that? Because I know that I, I think we have something, but can you help us understand like, Hey, when we talk about making it easier for a network administrator who doesn't really understand the cellular KPIs and doesn't want to have 18 different windows open that they have to go through as a, I mean, what does that solution look like?
Tim Dyer: Well, I'd say that that is the promise of RUCKUS One. And I use the word promise deliberately because we're on a journey, right? We don't, we do not have a turnkey product that addresses this today. And we are going through the process of, of integrating not just our own software stacks, but third party stacks as well as we head down this path of unified management.
And as part and parcel of that, we also we also have an offer in place for Network as a Service, which was my second brilliant thought, by the way, previously, and, and that Network as a Service is very privileged. Offer today is a little swivel cherry and and we will be our, we'll eat our own dog food is in this regard.
So as we head down the path to provide KPIs to our existing customers that are cellular customers, we will ensure that we are integrating the relevant information into the RUCKUS One platform as we move that forward into the future.
Jim Palmer: So, I mean. Can we say it? We might have to edit this out, but I mean, is RUCKUS ONE the plan to actually have a converged you know, private LTE and Wi-Fi and wired, you know, all into a single unified platform?
And all still a unified platform from the blog.
Tim Dyer: Yes, yes, yes. In fact, that is exactly what we announced back in in the, I think it was late July, first part of August timeframe. And and as I said, we did it in conjunction with our multi access public private announcement, as well as our Network as a Service announcement.
And we've had a few different Network as a Service announcements, because we realized that one size does not fit all for that market. Or when I say for that market, for the market, one size does not fit all. You've got an SMB offer that's going to be a much skinny down offer. And I'm just going to make up words.
So, uh, we'll have a skinny down offer that will have a different look and feel to it for the enterprises, as well as our service provider partners for SMB than it would say for high end enterprise.
Jim Palmer: So, you touched on SMB um, what about for customer, partners, who are doing who are doing managed networks, you know, provider, managed service providers for, I mean, is that, will that, will there be an option there for those Thank you. type of providers, you know, to where they can, you know, yeah, it's providing for an SMB, but they're managing it.
Tim Dyer: Absolutely. Yeah. And that, and that's to my prior point as well. And it's all well and good that we have tools that are available to us. And we have a separate managed service offer that we, that we white label through some of our partners. However, we're in the business of enabling and, and this is one of the things I love about RUCKUS.
RUCKUS basically created the managed service provider space. And I don't think we should be shy about the tools that we can pro offer to our partners in that space. And I believe that the RUCKUS One platform and the RUCKUS One extensions will be just additional ammunition in their arsenals in order to attack their respective markets.
John Deegan: Alright, so, we're all getting excited about RUCKUS ONE. We've got, it kind of feels like we've got something for everybody in there. And as Jim kind of touched on, it's, I, I always hear it like the single pane of glass. We've gotten customers, I work in the service provider space, customers are always asking like one spot to rule them all, right?
You've got your cellular, you've got your Wi-Fi. So the one problem, and I don't want to call it a problem, but the challenge we have with RUCKUS ONE is it's, it's got this misconception, maybe, or, or I guess people are still tied to it used to be RUCKUS Cloud. And, you know, they see RUCKUS ONE as just a cloud based Wi-Fi management platform and nothing else, but that.
Might have been the case before, depending on how you want to look at it. What does RUCKUS One offer that makes it a fit for Network as a Service or network as a solution type of offering? Like what's, I mean, what's the secret sauce, right? I mean, there's got to be something.
Tim Dyer: Sure. So I am not the RUCKUS One expert.
I'll lead with that. And at the same time, I'll say that RUCKUS One is a framework. And the reason why we built RUCKUS One is because we had a multitude of our own products. We, we had a multitude of screens and interfaces to, to manage and to be candid, it just got a little untenable. So so we had to go back to the drawing board and we re-architected a solution built from the ground up.
And it's, it's as much of framework as it is a platform. And, and when you build out frameworks and platforms today, you do it in a way that allows you to ingest. Data from third parties and manage third party elements. And I think that's one of the, the greatest strengths of that solution. And a differentiation is we're building it with the intent to allow even our service provider partners to use it.
And if a service provider partner had their own BI, I would suggest to you that that they get business intelligence tool. I would suggest to you that they'll be in a position to incorporate their own business intelligence tool. And I don't even know if that's absolutely true, because I'm not the RUCKUS One expert.
But that's, that's the way this thing should be architected.
John Deegan: We're not going to put him on the spot for this. You can't come back later and hold the podcast out and say, like, Tim said that it would do it. But, I mean, but I think he hit, I mean, from what I know of RUCKUS One, because again, I'm not a RUCKUS One expert either, and that's just because my customers don't consume it yet.
It was supposed to be, I think, bringing everything together under one nice pretty interface. And you know, you've got cloud, you've got RUCKUS Analytics. Sorry Rajiv, RUCKUS, AI and all of the, the nice bells and whistles that go with it. You've got Cloudpath, you've got, I mean, there's a lot going on that we bring to bear.
And then to be able to offer that to everybody and tie it in together, I think is, yeah, I'm excited for it. I'm, I'm really curious to see how it goes.
Jim Palmer: You know, Tim, Tim made a point though, that I think, and this is a question I've heard, and so I'm going to take a minute and, you know, stand on my soapbox and address this.
Yeah, Tim was talking about the fact. Yeah. Well, I'd have to raise my desk and everything, but anyway. You know, Tim made a, Tim made a point and I think it's, I think it's something that I want to spend just a minute or two to talk about is, you know, we re architected the backend and, and John, you were talking about like bringing in like Cloudpath and some of the other things.
And what I've learned about RUCKUS One is it's not so much of we're bringing, the we're not, we're not like tying in Cloudpath. We're actually taking the, the bits and the pieces that are, that are used from RUCKUS Cloudpath, and we're actually building it with inside RUCKUS One because of the micro architecture service stuff that they do on the backend, I don't know, I'm not a coder, you know, and so it does allow for like what Tim was talking about.
It does allow for the ability to say, Hey, you know, because this is built on a brand new backend architecture, it will allow for more consumption of the data for tying in all the different things. And so I think that's really, you know, a big thing to understand is, is it's not just, you know, a RUCKUS cloud is rebranded with a new, a new web UI and a new logo and everything, you know, it's actually, they, they rebuilt the whole entire backend to allow this stuff to be more flexible, to be, you know, we can tie in more things, which then I think lends itself to this Network as a Service to where it's so much easier.
Now we can say, Hey, we can bring in the private LTE as a, as an offer. And so as a way we can control it, you know, because it's, it's, it's built for the future. Not necessarily built for, it's kind of like roads, you know, when they build a road, it's like, oh yeah, we're going to build a four-lane road.
And by the time they get it built, it's like, well, I really needed an eight-lane road. RUCKUS ONE was rebuilt with the idea that, hey, we can expand and we can add stuff in as we need to. So I think, I think that's a really important point to make, Tim, that You know, it really was rebuilt to allow the Network as a Service type of offering to grow, because we're not sure where it's going to grow.
Tim Dyer: Right. And it's interesting a common question, or actually it's, it's a question people don't even ask, unfortunately, because we're, you know, everybody's so smart. What is a microservice and what do you mean when you, when you've got a microservices architecture? And it's nothing more challenging than, I love your, your roads and lanes.
It's great. It's a great example, right? You got, so I've got an eight-lane highway, but I only need seven lanes, or six lanes, or five lanes. I want to add a ninth lane. And I want to do that in a software context and framework that's easily done. easily perform. So microservice architecture allows you to basically drop in, make, make small changes that can be highly impactful to your overall solution.
And, and I think that's what all our MSP partners actually want to do, is to differentiate themselves with their own competition. So what better environment, uh, to develop in.
Jim Palmer: Yeah, speaking of building stuff, I think I need to build a new arm for my microphone. That was really kind of squeaky. And you can steal the road thing. I'll, you, because yeah, that's it. I mean, who doesn't understand that frustration of, you know, they're building a road just a mile down the road from my house and it, and it's, they told us they were going to build it like 10 years ago and they're finally finishing it up and they're getting, you know, went from one lane each directions and now it's two lanes each direction with a center turn lane and it's already like, beyond that, you know, it's like, Hey, we need to add more.
And they're like, what, we haven't even finished this one. So you can steal that. You can give credit, give credit to your 17-year-old teenager, make him feel good.
John Deegan: Oh man. Wow. And it seems crazy to think about that as much as we've got another good analogy. Wi-Fi has nothing but great analogies if you talk to enough people.
The ways we explain our business. We're actually kind of at the end of this. It's it's been a quick trip through networking as a service, or however you want to call it. That's the other fun thing, right? You've got an acronym. Tim and I were talking about this before. Some people call it this, some people call it that.
The letters, the numbers, they're all the same, but everybody's interpretation is a little bit different. So, to close this out, to kind of bring this all together we have a softball question for you, Mr. Dyer. What would you want our listeners to take away from this? You know, is there something that we do that, that you particularly involved in and proud of that you want to highlight?
Is there something about NaaS, if I can call it that, which is going to make people think about storage? Anything that we want to highlight that we didn't already talk about or that you just, you really want to hammer home?
Tim Dyer: Absolutely. The one thing I'd like to drive home is Network as a Service, as provided by us, think of us, we're, we're coming from our own chair, our own perspective.
So, we're talking about Wi-Fi, we're talking about in building cellular, we're talking about connectivity solutions, including switching, and even including some outdoor applications, both for Wi-Fi as well as for 5G. So, we think about this, we think about infrastructure as a service and Network as a Service.
From that perspective, so we're not talking about wide area. We're not talking about any of those elements for the sake of our definition of Network as a Service. So that's 1 thing I'd like people to take away. Another is that if. If you want to expand your services and do it easily, we offer a complete Network as a Service solution.
So you can outsource and white label our services as a service provider partner of ours and allow you to expand. If you've got if you've got more MDU business you want to do and you'd like to outsource that, we have, we have roughly 43,000 networks under management at 7,000 discrete locations.
Around the globe. So we're, we're pretty good at this. And so I'd like to pro offer those services to help you grow your business.
Jim Palmer: I did not know the 43,000 number. That is very impressive.
John Deegan: I like hearing those kinds of things though. You know, it's, it's nice. It is. It is nice.
Jim Palmer: Now, Tim, you, you had mentioned I think we, we were talking about this earlier that you've already done some videos about, you know, and, and record some stuff about this.
So, I'm going to go ahead and we'll add those to the show notes so that, you know, if you, if you want to hear Tim talking about more of this stuff you can do that. But it is, it is a sort of an interesting, you know, time in the network space as we start, you know, really talking about converging cellular to Wi-Fi.
So if you're, if you're interested we'll have the links to. Tim talking about this in some other locations and doing some other things. So but thank you for coming on and talking about it.
Tim Dyer: Thanks for having me, you guys. Appreciate it.
John Deegan: Our pleasure. And maybe we'll bring you back on you know, next year.
2024 is right around the corner. I'm sure we've got some exciting things coming down the pike. So you see, I had to work in a road reference there. If there's anything else you've got for us today. One last chance. The floor is yours.
Tim Dyer: No, I'll wait till next year. My kid will come up with a whole new quote and reference.
John Deegan: Perfect. I love it. Well, on that note gentlemen, I think that wraps us up for today. And we'll catch everybody on the next episode.
Jim Palmer: Thanks.
Tim Dyer: Thank you.
John Deegan: If you want to contact the show directly, you can email us using the address ruckcast at commscope dot com to learn more about RUCKUS products and services that we may have talked about on this or any other podcast.
Please check the links in the about section of the show.