Juniper Networks announced plans to acquire Mist Systems for approximately $405M in cash.  We think this deal makes sense for Juniper, who can now sell a key technology - WLAN - into its customer base of large and medium enterprises.  Valuation of the deal probably fell a bit short of the expectations of some, but the vendor landscape has already seen significant consolidation between Ethernet Switch and Enterprise-class WLAN vendors, with now just a few potential buyers and sellers.

The companies just had a call to discuss the announcement and share the following messages:

• Slightly dilutive to non gaap F19, accretive F20. 
• Verticals discussed on the call: h/c, retail, mfg and distribution segments
• Key wins discussed:  Large healthcare organization, Verizon Mgd SP, Walt Disney Orlando, Dartmouth College
• Business model will remain as current (60% hardware; 40% services at time of acquisition)
• No revenue numbers share
• $405M in cash; closes F2Q for JNPR
• Avoided saying who Mist competes with, other than to say Mist sees “the usual suspects”
• Mist should continue to grow because its channels will expand when Juniper acquires it
• Juniper will expand the “AI for IT” technology from Mist across the Juniper portfolio of campus switch, security and SD-WAN
• Will imminently begin 802.11ax pilots
• Last time new technology was developed for WLAN industry was over a decade ago; Mist is microservices / container based; all new
• Juniper has seen its campus switch business grow in recent times
• Will share more numbers in the future

H3C and Qualcomm announced the planned availability of the WA6628 802.11ax Wireless LAN Access Point; it is slated for September 2018 shipments.  This new Access Point uses the Qualcomm IPQ8078 part number - we checked the Qualcomm website and we cannot find this part on the website.  So, we assume that this is a future product.  

While the H3C press release is not the first 802.11ax Access Point get announced (Huawei, for instance, announced its own .11ax product in early 2017), this is important because this press announcement has a specific shipment date - September 2018.

Additionally, it is generally expected that another set of announcements are imminent from vendors using Broadcom chips.  Looks like Qualcomm and H3C wanted to get ahead of those announcements.

We attended the Wi-Fi NOW conference in Redwood City, CA this week and attended some interesting presentations.  We are writing about our observations and notes from the Google, Quantenna, Mist Systems and Mojo Networks presentations.  

Google Station presentation.  "GOOGLE STATION: PUBLIC WI-FI TO CONNECT THE NEXT BILLION INTERNET USERS."  Monica Garde and Erika Wool made an interesting presentation.  The jist of the presentation, from our viewpoint, is that Google is partnering with service providers and enabling these service providers to monetize the Wi-Fi network through a revenue sharing system that is based primarily upon advertising.  The company shared some statistics, which we have in the accompanying slide.

Quantenna presentation.  James Chen, VP Product Line Management presented "GREAT INNOVATIONS PART ONE: MASSIVE MIMO & DUAL-BAND 802.11AX".  Chen made the the case that 8x8 WiFi (that Quantenna calls Massive MIMO) outperforms 4x4 systems.  For instance, in its tests, at 85 RSSI and through a wall, performance was 1.6x greater using 8x8 compared to 4x4.  The company also made the case that Massive MIMO has greater throughput compared to non Massive MIMO, as well; the company has demonstrated >1 Gbps throughput in a typical home.  The company showed that Massive MIMO alleviates the "Sticky Client" using a 1x1 Samsung Galaxy Tab Active2 device.  The company did not talk about 802.11ax, unfortunately, other than to say that 8x8 is relevant for 802.11ax, as well.

Mojo Networks presentation.  Mojo CEO Rick Wilmer made the point that simply enabling Cloud-managed Wi-Fi has been done already, implying this is cloud 1.0, and that this message is boring.  The company explained that its cloud architecture is cloud 2.0 because it takes advantage of the capabilities in the cloud and enables - Cognitive Wi-Fi.  Cognitive Wi-Fi, as far as Mojo is concerned, has to do with big data (store key client parameters and run ML algorithms) and smart edge APs.  The company didn't go into deep science of ML/AI, but explained the ML workflow: 1-data collection, 2-training the classifier model, 3-trained model in action, 4-result.  

Mojo explained that it has lots of data to perform Machine Learning on.  It has 1/2M APs deployed.  The company shared that using 1 week of data of a subset across only 4 verticals (enterprise, education, mfg, retail & hospitality): 237K clients, 31M associations, 400+ applications.  Separately, the company said it has obtains 50M associations per week (in a press release).  A significant amount of the data that is delivered to the cloud has been pre-processed in the Mojo APs; the APs cache 2 days of data.  The point of these statistics, according to Mojo, is that it has more data than other Wi-Fi vendors to train its Machine Learning system on.  

According to Mojo, using inference engine, automatically fixes everything possible.  Wilmer says that this makes interacting with the User Interface less necessary because it takes care of problems automatically.  Was Mojo serious or joking when it said, "the UI may disappear as we know it."  Time will tell.

The company shared some other information that was interesting:

• 130K APs deployed at a single customers - a very large customer.  Very scalable.
• Many Mojo customers are decomissioning their EThernet infrastructure (including cables) in lieu of using Wi-Fi from Mojo. 
• Mojo deploys 'a lot' of 3 radio APs.  With third radio, a listening radio, it watches RF environment and does wireless intrusion scanning.  Every 5 seconds, it feeds critical information to the ML environment.  So, if users physically move, the AI system can make adjustments to the system so there are fewer performance issues.  The third radio can also be used as a client, to simulate performance.  This client capability can run the specific application that will used in an environment and simulate whether the Wi-Fi will perform adequately before an event (like a test at a university, for instance).
• Open Standards.  Believe all APs from all vendors should interoperate like light bulbs.  That would accelerate the Wi-Fi market.  Wilmer highlighted that the OCP event, earlier this year, Mojo 'lit up' the entire trade show floor with non Mojo APs using the Mojo system.
• Mojo will announce AP providers soon that are not Mojo APs that you can plug.  No margin stack from an OEM, purchased directly from an Asian ODM.  

Mist Systems.  Bob Friday, of Mist made a presentation on May 17, 2018.  In addition to the content from his presentation, I interviewed other at Mist personnel at the show.  The company claims it is focusing and having success in selling to large enterprises.  We learned that Mist uses Broadcom WiFi chips and has a custom-designed Bluetooth antennae array (shown at the show).  The company highlights its location services as a unique capability, and it draws upon its Bluetooth capabilities to deliver location.  However, the company's main message is its AI capabilities; in some ways, it has become the poster-child for AI amongst startups in the networking industry.  Mist's presentation at the show reiterated the same point - that it is an AI company.  

Stepping back, Mist has been shipping commercially for a year now.  In our observation and research, the company's efforts to take share from competitors has landed it on the map - over the past two quarters, its larger competitors have taken notice of Mist and see it competing at large enterprise accounts.  

During the Q&A part of the presentation by Bob Friday, Mist CTO and founder was asked something that we found very interesting; the question was what kinds of algorithms does Mist use in its system, and do they all need to learn?  The answer was to the effect that many different types of algorithms are used, linear optimization, decision tree analytics, neural networks, etc.  Friday made the case that there are just certain things you just know about how a WiFi network will and should work, so why go an have a machine learn about it when you already know it.  This begs the question - how necessary is AI in the first place, especially if the vendor and its IT workers or VARs have gobs of experience and can design and implement a Wi-Fi network right in the first place.  Looking at the problem differently, what this means is that some vendors may have had different backgrounds than competitors and can design Wi-Fi systems that know how to work under a variety of working conditions.  Friday was also asked another question - given that Mist is focusing so much on AI, does this mean that far fewer IT workers will become employed?  Bob's answer was diplomatic, but probably true - he said that no, we'll need the same number of workers in the near-term, and that AI Wi-Fi will simply allow the same number of IT workers to make better decisions.  Still, the question makes it clear - the audience is concerned about job loss as AI works its way into the IT industry.

Arris held its annual investor day late last week on March 28, 2018.  It was interesting: the company said "Everything is going wireless," which is an interesting admission for a company that, until about a year ago, was essentially a pureplay on wired broadband.  To be sure, the company has diversified into wireless with its acquisition of Ruckus and has benefitted from the inclusion of Wi-Fi capabilities to its broadband CPE.  The company sees this wireless future - and is pivoting towards it.

Arris management highlighted that it expect its future to include the following growth avenues:

• Cloud Wi-Fi
• DELL OEM
• CBRS 3.5 GHz LTE Small Cell
• IoT (Residential and Industrial)
• FTTx (10Gb EPON / NGPON-2)
• Consumer Mesh Wi-Fi
• Campus Ethernet Switching

Additionally, the company discussed its expectations for each division, which using its 2017 mix and various projections, calculates to a 4.7% CAGR from '17 to '21.

Enterprise Networking (Ruckus).  Overall, the company's Enterprise Networking division, also known as Ruckus Networking, includes its Enterprise WLAN business (formerly Ruckus Wireless), the Brocade ICX Ethernet Switch product line (referred to by the company as Campus Switching), and other revenue streams such as CBRS 3.5 Ghz LTE Small Cells, as well as IoT radio modules that plug into the Ruckus Access Points like Bluetooth, LoRa and Zigbee.  The company is targeting 20%+ growth for the Ruckus Networking group, which is far above the industry growth rates we expect for Enterprise plus Outdoor WLAN and Campus switching. This aggressive growth rate either implies share-taking, or growth in other products such as CBRS, Bluetooth, LoRa and Zigbee, or the the non-WLAN parts of what used to be Ruckus Wireless, such as Cloud-managed Wireless LAN services (that, for instance compete with Cisco's Meraki, Aerohive services and Mojo Networks).  The company cited an expected Enterprise WLAN revenue growth projection slightly above our projection for the period '17 to '21, even if cloud-managed WiFi services were included.

​Network and Cloud Segment.  The company said this market is growing 5% annually, and described the market generally as the Cable Modem Infrastructure, optical nodes and cable video networks market.  The company generally expects to take share, compared to this market viewpoint, projecting a 4-7% long-term annual growth expectation for this business segment.  It was interesting that the company said that the "mobile device explosion [is] driving offload demand," because it has been several years since "Wi-Fi offload" was a growth driver, but dissecting the comment a bit more, the company is pointing to cable operators as being "well positioned to handle [the] offload."  We think Arris' strong supplier position with the major Cable MSOs in the US, especially, may indicate that there should be a strong build up of WiFi and cable infrastructure coming in the future.  And, this corroborates with our own research and statements from MSOs such as Comcast.  In fact, the company showed a "future" network diagram that indicates it expects its MSO customers will be delivering 5G radio, Remote OLTs (PON) and Fixed Wireless Access instead the of cable modem (DOCSIS) equipment that was indicated in the "now" chart.  This implied shift from DOCSIS to PON/5G/FWA would be a dramatic shift in the company's product portfolio.  Very interesting, indeed.

Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Segment.  The company claims a #1 Set Top Box (STB) market share, and #2 Broadband CPE market share, with a mix of 60% video CPE and 40% broadband revenues in 2017.  The company expects to grow broadband CPE to a mix of 50%+ by the year 2021, consistent with the market growth rates it cites - 4% CAGR for broadband and -.8% for video.  Generally, the company is projecting long term sales trend of -5% to +1%, indicating that it lacks the direct to market exposure that would get it to a growth expectation in this segment.  The company confirmed it is using NBASE-T (Multi-Gigabit Ethernet) interfaces on its home networking devices and it is planning to release 802.11ax capabilities on its portfolio, as well.  Arris CPE will also include Extenders / Adapters to, at least partially, address the growth now occurring in the Consumer Mesh market.

cWe attended the upbeat Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) Connex18 conference, where the company said its strategy is focused on three pillars: verticals, cloud and services.  In its networks business, most significantly, the company announced: its Omnivista Cirrus cloud-managed network services offering, the WLAN indoor Location Based Services system and its plans for its Network On Demand offering.  Finally, the company has retained the use of the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand name for the next few decades, shutting down speculation of a rebranding.

Verticals.  Company has organized its development and selling efforts around five vertical markets: transportation, government, healthcare, education and hospitality.  Last year, the company achieved over 100% growth in its transportation vertical, benefiting from Internet of Things (IoT) trends.  Our view is the transportation vertical and, more generally, industrial, has the opportunity to grow faster than other verticals due to the growing number of IoT use cases emerging.

Cirrus.  The company will soon offer a cloud-managed network services capability to customers that use its WLAN and switch products.  In this respect, ALE is taking on Cisco's Meraki and Aerohive, among others.  Customers can choose from its free offering or its premium offering, depending on what features are needed.  We expect that the company will be aggressive about moving customers to this service.  Pricing was not announced, though we expect the company will set prices generally at a modest discount to those of Meraki, both on product and services.

WLAN & Location Based Services (LBS).  The update focused mainly on the in-house developed Stellar WLAN product line.  Its capabilities have improved over the past year, its management capabilities have improved and will soon include cloud based management (called Cirrus), and the devices are being offered using new business models (including NOD).  The wireless product line is being specialized to support the new verticals discussed earlier.  Generally, Stellar is moving up market.  The Stellar WLAN product line is much broader than it was last year and has increased capabilities, including far greater scalability - Stellar will support 4,000 APs per campus will soon be possible.  ALE exepects Stellar WLAN to support 802.11ax by 4Q18.

The company made a big deal about Location Based Services.  Today, Bluetooth (specifically BLE) is the wireless technology being used.  BLE is incorporated into high end APs and is available using USB ports on the rest of the WLAN Access Points, or BLE beacons are available, too.  The company will offer WiFi LBS later in '18.  Examples of capabilities enabled by LBS include geopositioning and wayfinding, geofencing notifications, people tracking/flow, analytics (geofencing based).  For instance, for healthcare, the company demonstrated a 'Way Finder' capability that runs on patient smartphones that uses WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities from its WLAN APs to allow patients to navigate themselves through the healthcare facility.  Another example is for the transportation industry, where the company's ruggedized switches are finding a home, the Outdoor ruggedized APs are matched well.  

Network On Demand (NOD).  The company has signed up about 40 customers to use its NOD offering, which allows customers to use ALE switches and wireless products while paying a monthly fee instead of purchasing the equipment up front.  NOD was introduced in 4Q17 and is currently available for in-house developed products like OmniSwitch and Stellar WLAN.  NOD may be offered for third party devices, such as those from HPE Aruba, but are currently not available.  We understand that the network architecture is designed by ALE.  The company gave a few examples of customer types, mainly surrounding the idea that a quick decision had to be made on upgrading the network but there was a lengthy approval process for capital spending but a short one for operational spending, or that there was insufficient budget for the capital spending.  

Last week we attended Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai which is turning into a massive event for Huawei with significant customer attendance.  It was tons of fun to talk to customers, catch up with friends, and the different parts of Huawei while on the show floor.  While there are ton of highlights from the show, here are a few highlights that peaked our interest.

• Huawei became the first vendor to offer an 802.11ax Access Point (AP).  Sampling now and shipping in early 2018.  We ran into quite a few engineers on the show floor that were very proud of being the first vendor to announce a product in this space and learned quite a bit beyond the spec sheet.
• Huawei customers are broad based and growing significantly.  We ran into many large customers, especially from western Europe, that are looking to partner with Huawei beyond just point product purchases.  In some cases, this was campus switching and WLAN, in others it was DC switching and campus.  Huawei is doing a very good job of providing solutions and not just point products and customers are embracing it.
• 1% of customer spend.  Huawei consistently highlighted that it was only targeting 1% of customer spend, leaving the other 99% to its partners.  We found this interesting that as Huawei grows they are trying to assure their partner community that they will not go after the entire software and solution stack and instead focus on the pipes and compute.  In areas of IoT they would integrate deeply with those partners, but the goal was to provide a complete selection directly to the customer.

There were a ton of other highlights, we are happy to discuss, if anything sparks your interest, let us know.