The company is still grappling with how to best integrate, use and effectively sell the technologies it has acquired from Avaya and Brocade
in the past year, as well as incorporate and develop its own products
to do battle in the cloud, mobile and edge computing environments of the
future. Remember, too, that Extreme bought wireless player Zebra
Technologies in 2016 for $55 million.
In terms of results that Wall Street watches, Extreme Networks grew revenue 76% to $262 million in its recent fiscal third quarter.
According to Extreme, those gains were fueled mostly by growth from its
acquisitions and around an 8% growth in its own products.
Analyst expectations were higher about – $266 million – so there was some stock market consternation earlier this year. There have been some
layoffs at the company, but most experts say integrating the
technologies Extreme has purchased in the past two years is no small
feat, and they expect the network vendor to continue growing.
Extreme CEO Ed Meyercord thinks so, as well, telling analysts on the firm’s most recent earnings call: “Combining Avaya’s differentiated
fabric technology with Extreme’s full suite of software and competitive
wireless, continues to yield dividends from a cross-selling perspective.
We are now rebuilding our pipeline of business in our Avaya campus
business, which is being generated by strong demand for our fabric
solution.”
He says the Layer 2 fabric is easy to deploy and enables segmenting networks for better security, which is stimulatingn demand. "We continue
to target a $200 million annual run rate in Q4 and growth in fiscal
2019 at a higher gross margin level than what we saw in Q3,” Meyercord
said.
Key to customer acceptance and future growth Extreme recently took the wraps off a number of new products that represent its first rollout
that featured technologies from its newly integrated roster including
wired, wireless, network management, cloud, analytics and security.
Customers need to protect and advance their edge networks, and there has been no path to protect and manage this vital environment, says
Mike Leibovitz, director of mobility solutions at Extreme. The network
edge is where mobile transactions, management and connection of IoT
devices occur. It is the first line of defense against cyberattacks
where multiple connectivity technologies come together across various
locations and deployment situations.
Extreme debuts Smart OmniEdge for Wi-Fi, switching
And that’s where the company’s Smart OmniEdge suite of products promises to improve the management, policy setting and security of
customers’ edge network environments, Leibovitz says.
The Smart OmniEdge family includes:
ExtremeAI for Smart OmniEdge – A hosted application for Wi-Fi environments that uses machine learning to collect network analytics,
device statistics, connection rates, and user and application experience
characteristics. This lets the network constantly learn and adapt to a
customer’s clients and applications accessing the Wi-Fi network, Extreme
said.
ExtremeCloud Appliance – The on-premises appliance delivers cloud-like licensing and management with integrated services and is
container ready for operational expansion, Extreme stated. It is also
available as a virtual machine (VM) for customers that have their own
private-cloud services.
Extreme Extended Edge Switching – Software for Extreme’s family of switches that lets customers collapse multiple network layers into a
single logical switch. The idea is to enhance edge switch intelligence,
flatten the network and ultimately cut costs, the company said.
Extreme Defender for IoT – The Defender for IoT application can be deployed on the ExtremeCloud Appliance in any form factor and used to
help ensure secure access of IoT devices plugged into the wall jack AP
or the Extreme Defender Adaptor. The application lets IT administrators
analyze traffic flows and pinpoint anomalies. The application works with
the Extreme Fabric Connect infrastructure or over third-party networks
to protect IoT devices, and is ideal for healthcare environments, the
company said.
