Rock Bottom Standardizes on Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi for Its Restaurants Across the United States

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Ruckus Wireless™, the smart mobile internetworking company, today announced that it has been selected by Rock Bottom Restaurants, Inc., one of the nation's leading casual dining companies, to supply next generation Smart Wi-Fi equipment for 103 restaurants across the country.

Rock Bottom Restaurants operates a variety of casual dining restaurants including Old Chicago, the Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, Chop House & Brewery, Walnut Brewery and Sing Sing piano bars. The Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi equipment will be used to deliver new levels of customer service that can be enabled by more reliable wireless technology supporting higher speeds and more stable client connections.

"As the world goes wireless, there's a real opportunity within our industry to radically enhance the guest service experience through the use of more advanced Wi-Fi," said Rob Jakoby, VP of IT at Rock Bottom Restaurants, Inc., based in Louisville, Colorado. "With everything becoming electronic, smarter Wi-Fi technology gives us the opportunity to introduce new services and applications, while improving the overall efficiency of our operations. This will give us the foundation to build our future technology on."

Jakoby noted that recent advances in Wi-Fi technology are enabling new applications such as tabletop payment and media devices that allow customers to access multimedia content and video streaming and online gaming. Meanwhile the same wireless infrastructure can be used to support point of sale and secure guest access.

"Given a limited IT staff to serve so many remote locations, we needed a Wi-Fi system that could deliver robust connectivity with a lot of horsepower, be ultra simple to deploy, remotely manageable and all at an affordable price point," said Jakoby. "We found these competing requirements were not addressed with conventional 802.11 technology."

Rock Bottom becomes the first to test and deploy the new Ruckus ZoneFlex 7300 series of mid-range 802.11n access points that provide industry leading performance at the most affordable price point available today (see related release). The Ruckus ZoneFlex wireless access points replace a legacy 802.11g system.

"Given the type of interactive and multimedia applications we envision in the future, the ability to deploy higher speed 802.11n systems in our restaurants at 802.11g prices is a big win for us," said Jakoby. "With the flood of smart phones and Wi-Fi-enabled handheld devices hitting the market, customers have come to expect carrier class wireless connectivity.  The Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi technology helps us meet these expectations in a very affordable fashion."

Each Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart Wi-Fi access point integrates a patented smart antenna array that focuses and directs Wi-Fi signals over the best signal path, automatically avoiding interference to ensure the highest data rates and consistent performance wherever clients roam. ZoneFlex Smart Wi-Fi access points can be deployed as standalone APs without a controller or with a controller as a fully centralized wireless LAN system.

Rock Bottom will deploy multiple ZoneFlex APs in each of its restaurants, managing all the APs as a unified system using the Ruckus FlexMaster remote Wi-Fi management platform. This gives Rock Bottom the ability to quickly and easily perform bulk configuration, proactively troubleshoot the network from a single location, gather statistics and actively monitor each ZoneFlex access point. The Wi-Fi rollout is currently underway and will continue throughout 2010.

About Ruckus Wireless, Inc.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Ruckus Wireless is supplier of advanced wireless systems for the mobile Internetworking market. The company markets and manufactures a wide range of indoor and outdoor "Smart Wi-Fi" products for mobile operators, broadband service providers and corporate enterprises around the world. Ranked as the top telecom company in the 2009 Inc. Magazine 500 list and named a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, Ruckus Wireless has realized dramatic growth. Since 2006, revenue and shipments have grown by over 1000 percent. Ruckus invented, and has patented, innovative state-of-the-art wireless technology that steers signals around obstacles and interference. This unique capability extends signal range and ensures consistent reliable distribution of delay-sensitive multimedia content and services over standard 802.11 Wi-Fi. The company has shipped over 2 million Smart Wi-Fi systems around the world and has raised $51 million in funding from premier investors such as Sequoia Capital, Focus Ventures, Sutter Hill, Motorola, T-Ventures, Telus Ventures and Firelake Capital. The company is led by Ms. Selina Lo, president and chief executive officer. For more information, visit Ruckus Wireless at http://www.ruckuswireless.com.

SOURCE Ruckus Wireless