Arris to triple investment in new product development

Bob Stanzione

Arris plans to spend over US$500 million (€367 million) on new product development following its acquisition of Motorola Home, CEO Bob Stanzione told DTVE at the recent IBC exhibition.

According to Stanzione, Arris will focus on developing a new generation of gateway devices capable of ingesting content and processing it for onward distribution to IP-enabled devices in the home.

“We have to develop a new generation of in-home devices capable of ingesting traditional as well as IP video traffic, converting it to IP…as well as transmitting it to any [IP] device,” said Stanzione. He said there was a need to “simplify the way service providers deliver content”.

Stanzione said the US$500 million represented a threefold increase on what Arris was spending previously, reflecting the increase in the size of the company.

In addition to in-home devices, Arris would focus on IP video generally, with new products including its recent converged cable edge router, the E6000, designed to provide a much denser hardware platform enabling the creation of an all-IP platform much closer to the edge of the network.

In the home, he said, there is an ongoing need for a hardware platform via which service providers can deliver a compelling user experience. “Within the home, there will be a need for the foreseeable future for a device that can ingest and [deliver] content and send back the other way to the network,” he said. “As far as we can see service providers will need these in-home devices. One big trend is the integration of router and WiFi capability within a home gateway – the majority of units we are shipping combine router and WiFi capability, and as the WiFi technology has evolved we have put more and more powerful WiFi capability into these systems.”

In addition to hardware, devices require increasingly complex software and Stanzione said that two thirds of Arris’s engineers were now focused on software. While service providers are embracing over-the-top delivery and more and more processing is being done in the cloud, there is still a need for powerful in-home devices, however, he said.

“More and more is done in the cloud but we are putting more and more powerful processors into the in-home platforms,” he said.

With the acquisition of Motorola Home, Stanzione said that Arris had created a company with a clear focus and culture.

“We have formed a very powerful and unique company that’s focused on broadband for service providers to deliver video, voice and data to their subscribers,” said Stanzione. “We have the scale to provide anything that service providers require to deliver those services, and the diversity from a product portfolio standpoint as well as diversity of customers.” The acquisition of Motorola Home had given the company a stronger presence outside the US, he said.

Stanzione said the integration of the two companies had progressed smoothly. “I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made,” he said. “The customer-facing organisation we integrated in no time just after we announced the closing of the transaction. In the background we have resolved overlaps and what we still have to do is more under the cover – IT, finance and operations. We are ahead of schedule in developing a single Arris culture, but the cultures were quite well aligned to begin with.”