Tag: Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks has new CTO

Extreme Networks appointed Nabil Bukhari as Chief Technology Officer, in addition to his current role as Chief Product Officer.

In his new role as CTO, Bukhari will expand on the “first mover” technology strategy he implemented to deliver simple, effortless, cloud-driven networking solutions that improve customer experiences and drive business advantages. He will continue to report to President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Meyercord.

Extreme Networks President and CEO Ed Meyercord said that Bukhari had done an outstanding job leading and transforming the outfit’s product organisation.

Extreme Networks modifies reseller channel

Extreme Networks has made changes to its channel programme to support its reseller community in navigating coronavirus challenges.

The updates are designed to offer maximum flexibility for partners to maintain their status, earn rebates and retain their certifications. The programme has further expanded its virtual training offering, including free remote cloud technical certification training, and provides  financial deferment options so that resellers can focus first and foremost on the needs of their customers.

The changes include:

Extreme buys Aerohive Networks.

Extreme Networks has bought cloud-managed networking outfit Aerohive Networks.

Under the deal Extreme will acquire all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Aerohive at a price of $4.45 per share in cash, representing an aggregate purchase price of approximately $272 million. Accounting for Aerohive’s net cash balance of $62 million at the end of March, the deal is equivalent to an enterprise value of $210 million.

Extreme Networks boosts partner support

Extreme Networks is sprucing up its partner programme and increasing the rewards for its top tier Diamond Black partners and providing more self-assessment tools for resellers.

John Morrison, vice president of sales and services at Extreme Networks, said that the enhancements were designed to make life simpler.

“We have a solution that takes you from the application right to the user device, managed under a single pane of glass with visibility and policy that allows you to build that solution with a view to delivering the customer experience. We want to talk about the solution we now have and what our portfolio now allows us to deliver and that is an overall message to both customers and partners. The other message to partners is that we are focusing on our partner programmes and taking feedback on the programme as it was.”

Extreme Networks announces new IoT product

Extreme Networks announced the general availability of Extreme Networks’ Defender for IoT which helps organisations secure unsecured IoT devices.

Defender for IoT can be deployed on any network and designed to allow non-technical staff at schools, hospitals, retailers and hospitality venues can use it to isolate and protect both wired and wireless IoT devices from cyber attacks.

IoT devices present two major security flaws for businesses today. Most lack embedded security—they were built to run on private networks where the assumption was it was tightly controlled, and device-level security wasn’t required. Manufacturers never considered that the private enterprise network could be connected to the public internet, and therefore the devices may run out-of-date operating systems, have hardcoded passwords and/or lack anti-virus and firewall capabilities. And they are typically deployed in a flat or unsegmented network so that if breached, the attacker can gain access to sensitive areas of the network.

David Raftery, Chief Revenue Officer, Integration Partners said that customers across the industry were having difficulty with IoT security and one of the most challenging aspects is the creation of security policies for a diverse range of devices.

“This can be time-consuming and fraught with error. Extreme’s Defender for IoT solution automates this task with its ability to learn a device’s typical behaviour and then build a security policy that restricts its communication to only what is authorised. With the ability to then segment IoT devices into secure tunnels, Extreme provides our customers multi-layered IoT security over whatever network they have deployed today. It’s a unique and a compelling solution”, he said.

Mike Leibovitz, Senior Director of Product Management and Strategy, Extreme Networks said that businesses are extracting so much value from the IoT revolution that it’s easy to see why deployments are happening fast, and security should not be viewed as an impediment to that.

Networking infrastructure set to boom

Extreme Networks is expecting this year to be a good year for those flogging network infrastructure.

While the current trend appears to be software and hosted applications the much predicted “death of hardware” might not be a thing in the networking world.

John Morrison, VP, Extreme Networks said that this year could see a shift in focus away from software and apps back to infrastructure.

Extreme Networks increases partner finance options

Extreme_(_Extreme_album_-_cover_art)Extreme Networks has increased its finance options for partners.

The big idea is that it can use zero interest and other finance offers to encourage users to increase their networking investments.

Dubbed Extreme Capital Solutions, the scheme provides partners and customers with access to zero percent interest financing with the hope of tempting customers to invest. There is also the option of a Network Subscription that removes the need for upfront investment.

The options for partners include customised leasing, total solution financing, compensation plans available through resellers and technical support options that are linked to service level agreements.

Extreme Networks. CEO Ed Meyercord said: “By launching Extreme Capital Solutions, we’re building on a strong legacy programme that gives our partners an ability to support evolving consumption models and allows our customers to access Extreme’s hardware and software-driven solutions through a flexible programme that meets their needs.”

Avaya has exited Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 sees it moaning about rivals

21077-nidal-ab_articleAvaya has exited Chapter 11, and its president has slammed his rivals for capitalising on its woes with “negative selling”.

For those who came in late, Avaya has had a horrible year. But now it seems that it has emerged from bankruptcy protection and reduced its debt by $3 billion and flogged its networking business to Extreme Networks.

Avaya said it is now putting plans in place to float on the New York Stock Exchange.

Writing in his bog, Avaya president Nidal Abou-Ltaif slammed Avaya’s competitors for the approach they took to taking advantage of Avaya’s struggles.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’ve always been ready to leverage the weakness of our competition”, he wrote.

“Throughout my time here we’ve and will continue to have a fierce passion for winning and that will never change. The difference between us and some of our competitors is that we’ve always fought fair and we’ve always looked at who should be the true winner in any outcome – our customers.

“Some of our competitors went down the negative-selling route, trying to put Avaya down in the hearts and minds of our customers and partners.

“Not only does this not work, but it’s also left our competitors less confident in their abilities. Result: we’ve beaten them to the punch on key strategic accounts, with customers preferring to do business with people they trust.”

Brocade is now Extreme

Extreme_(_Extreme_album_-_cover_art)Extreme Networks has completed its takeover of Brocade’s networking business which it claims will take it over the $1 billion revenue threshold.

For those who came in late, the acquisition was first announced in March, came after Broadcom acquired Brocade but wanted to off-load its networking business. Extreme Networks meanwhile wrote a cheque for Zebra’s LAN business and Avaya’s networking bits.

Extreme Networks CEO Ed Meyercord said: “This is an exciting day for Extreme as we have now significantly strengthened our position in the expanding high-end datacentre market with the industry leading solution for enterprise customers. Through a series of synergistic acquisitions, Extreme is now a top player in the enterprise networking industry and expects to generate over $1bn in annual revenues.”

He added that the announcement was not only a significant milestone for our growth strategy, but it also allows Extreme to assist more customers around the globe with end-to-end software-driven solutions to drive their digital transformation initiatives.

Extreme Networks’ share price has risen over 130 percent since the start of the year, giving it a market cap of $1.3 billion.

 

Avaya sells networking business to Extreme

avaya logoAvaya is flogging its networking business to Extreme Networks for $100 million.

While Extreme said that it was interested in the deal in March it took a while for the deal to go through because Avaya was asking around to see if it could get more dosh. The deal will close on 1 July.

Avaya is selling off the family silver to help it restructure debts, and wants to focus on unified communications instead.

Extreme wants to take on Cisco and HPE and has also acquired Brocade’s data centre networking so it can cover the data centre core, LAN, campus networks, WANs and security.

Extreme thinks the deal will yield annual revenues which are more than $200 million.