Yeah right on. I would also assume no difference but you know what happens when you assume. It's all too familiar of a story when a company cuts costs by using crappier parts or components but sell the same product as if there's nothing different.
no difference other than the badge, sticker, and chassis color. commscope/ruckus/brocade makes the
ANX-7150 for Access Networks. The gear is actually more expensive than your typical brocade 7150 from the disty channels,
same is true for the AP's and other switches too. Switches and AP's look familiar to anyone?
Access Networks is used predominantly by home media/automation/smart home companies for high-end custom upscale deployments. The end-user is typically paying the smart home company for support, the smart home company goes to Access Networks for support on the gear NOT Commscope. Access may need to go to commscope for support depending on the issue. heck, if you look at what (at least in the early days) needed to be done in a ruckus multi-ap environment with brocade switches to make a multi SONOS device deployment work reliably then you start to get an inkling of all the other components (and ecosystem integration) that ends up being done. So there is some knowledge required on all of that and it is worth some $$$.
Your typical c-level with the fancy home is not going to sysadmin their own sh*te. The c-level outsources it to said smart home company. As with anything the H/W margin is not that great (though better than consumer/commidity) but the margin on the support - I think a lot of us know that's where long term revenue and higher margin can come from. The margin on the Access gear though is pretty phenomenal (to someone at some point though) given the mark-ups.
For example: I had to review a quote from one such smart home company 2 years ago - basically talking about a couple of ANX7250-24p's, 4 A710's, and a sphos XG230. $29K USD installed with 3 years of support baked in on the network. Used bay pricing then uhmmmm (estimates on high side), $1k for the ICX7250's, 4xR710 you get another $1K, $500 for a used XG230, $2.5K, +5 hours to research what you need to do, get your config in order, bump firmwares, configure, and rock and roll with a serious reduction in cost. Now, not a fair comparison, used vs. new, self insure on the hardware bits, and hourly for support. said customer was not your typical C-level type which is why I ended up doing the review for them and they went that route.
There is a market for the Access products - a very premium market and IMO not necessarily a scam if you are truly getting the full white glove service for your fancy shmancy smart home ecologies.
It is definitely premium though.
that black chassis on the 7150 though - sweeeeeetttttt!
