Creating A Ruckus

Dan Webber, who served as vice president of IT at Lodgian when the big deal was completed, said the Cisco solution came in at more than two times the price of the Ruckus solution even with a 41 to 55 percent Cisco discount. Not only that, but maintenance costs for the Cisco solution were a whopping three times higher than the Ruckus solution, said Webber, a partner at Tatum LLC, an executive services and consulting firm.

The Cisco-Ruckus face-off ended up at board level for approval for the funding for the Wi-Fi rollout, Webber said. It came down to bucking the old IT maxim that no one ever got fired for buying Cisco or IBM.

Webber, who was in the midst of an eight-month Tatum temporary assignment for Lodgian when the big deal was signed, points out that the executive firm prides itself on its vendor independence. “We put all the products through the paces and Ruckus had not only the financial and technology metrics but also hit the business needs right over the top of the head at the right price point.”

The ROI on the Ruckus solution was less than 90 days compared to a 270-day ROI on the Cisco solution, he said. The Lodgian general managers have been so pleased with the reliability and the new business opportunities it brought to the company that Webber received several thunderous ovations at the hotel operator’s general manager conference in April.

“Part of it is how you define bleeding edge versus leading edge,” Webber added. “When you get down to the heart and core of the technology we were able to demonstrate that Ruckus was able to do what needed to be done in the hotel properties. Quite frankly, I have spent millions of dollars over the years with Cisco. There is a place where Cisco absolutely makes sense. It’s a great company and a great vendor, but in this case we had all the pieces on the table to show we could get where we needed to be with Ruckus.”

As for One Media, Webber said the solution provider “truly defined the word partner” during the extremely intense implementation schedule. “I would highly recommend them and I am very tough on vendors. They lived up to every promise.”

So what does it all mean to One Media’s bottom line? Gompers said his wireless solutions profitability is up 100 percent since teaming with Ruckus because his company is doing twice the number of installs each month at half the cost to the client. One Media was able to implement the Ruckus solution in 41 Lodgian hotels in only 90 days.

Year to date, One Media has been able to complete 75 installs compared to 25 in the same period one year ago with traditional Wi-Fi technology, Gompers said. “We can knock out four or five installs in the same area with one plane ticket per person,” he said. With older wireless solutions, profitability always looked good on “paper,” but once the One Media team got on the ground, each install was “like trying to build the space shuttle,” Gompers said.

Not only that, Gompers can get directly to the top Ruckus engineers to try to get new features added to the product portfolio that will directly impact his ability to win business. “You wouldn’t get that in a million years working with Cisco,” he said. And because Ruckus is a channel-focused company, he is confident that he is not going to spec out a deal and have it shopped at the last minute by a purchasing agent Googling for a better price from an Internet e-tailer or a consultant working out of a garage.

Gompers, for his part, sees no end in sight to the wireless LAN boom times with the Ruckus solution. He is in the midst of rolling out a Ruckus wireless LAN-in-a-box solution for hotels with 100 rooms or less. “It’s a limitless opportunity,” he said.

Lo’s message to partners is simple when it comes to making wireless every bit as ubiquitous as Ethernet-based LANs with a more advanced technology that is differentiated from the larger player offerings: “If you want to make a difference, make a Ruckus!”

a collaboration creating networking ruckus