I've been out to visit Ranch Networks a few times in the past few years and my first visit was interesting as the company didn't seem 100% sure of what direcion to take their products in. They had talented engineers but the strategy wasn't clear to me or them.

A few years later the company switched their strategy to providing security for the Asterisk space. This seemed to me like a can't miss market. But frankly I haven't been in very close touch with company execs for a while.

I received an e-mail today from a past team member who asked me if the campany was gone because their website is dead. I queried my internal database and it does seem like their phone numbers have been dead for a number of months.

I haven't heard a single negative thing about the company so this news comes as a bit of a surpise.

If you have additional information feel free to add to this post.

Update: Here are some thoughts from a reliable, anonymous source:

Ranch had their funding pulled and is basically out of businesses.  They closed their doors and let everyone go about a year ago. They spent their time chasing one large deal (3Com) who wanted to use any available financial resources on their recent acquisitions (so I was told). Ram Ayyakad, their CEO has been trying to sell the technology, but can’t seem to gain much interest.  They still believe they have something that is valuable.