New Extreme Networks Solutions Aim to be Simple, Fast and Smart

The traditional networking market is in an interesting place to occupy as recently, Juniper announced layoffs and recently Cisco announced it is making a major investment in the cloud space. At a high level does this mean the networking market is losing steam and will see less innovation?

Not according to Bob Noel, Senior Director, Solutions Marketing at Extreme Networks. Their acquisition of Enterasys closed last November and they are proud of the progress they have made and their vision for the future.

It can be summed up as follows according to Noel who said, “Our software defined architecture is simple, fast and smart from mobile edge to the data center.” He continued, “We offer a combination of high performance hardware coupled with a unified software approach, unique in the market.”

To put this in perspective he offered the following insight on the company’s activities…

The company’s new NetSight 6.0 centralized management solution brings together one tool with a single database which provides automated provisioning leading to rapid problem identification and resolution across the entire network. This applies to both the Extreme and Enterasys product lines and he was fairly proud that this was done in five-months. He said, “Differentiation through software is a key part of our R&D strategy going forward.” This solution helps the customer manage their whole portfolio, wired and wireless with one management console. He said that other companies say they do this – but Extreme has a single database, not just the ability to launch disparate apps from a central location. He said this is what speeds time to resolution and reduces the skills needed and increase in headcount required to manage the network.

Continuing, Purview is their relatively new solution which provides application analytics at layer 7 directly from the network. He said it understands users, devices, apps, application adoption, engagement and ROI and delivers a more positive user experience. Noel continued by saying it can be used to measure adoption of apps if needed. This allows a company to see what the users are doing and if they are are actually using solutions which they have invested in.

He said, “IT gets business intelligence allowing them to make business decisions which weren’t previously available.” Continuing, he said, “It fingerprints apps. We have over 13,000 fingerprints and can add new ones in order to understand their adoption by leveraging the network.”

SDN 2.0 is their play in the SDN space. He says SDN is important but only a component of an overall solution. Continuing, he said you need programability and orchestration to make it all work together properly. While many competitors look southbound – OpenFlow to infrastructure, they do northbound out of the box and subsequently interoperate with VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, MobileIron, AirWatch and more. “We leverage the intelligence of these 3rd party tools to deliver programability and orchestration,” Noel concluded.

For example if the MDM determines a device is jailbroken, Extreme can immediately block network access.

Also, in a virtual environment – where a VM is assigned a security and priority level, they can manage it as it moves across the data center or to another. He pointed out others can do this with their own servers but Extreme offers the ability to work with the virtualization companies mentioned above.

In addition, the company announced new 802.11ac APs as well as the BlackDiamond X8 100GbE blade providing 100G wire speed with 20 Tbs of non-blocking throughput.

Their goal is to offer a broad enough range of hardware and software solutions with better management capabilities which will decrease TCO – in other words lots of innovation. It is a solid story and it will be interesting to see how the market reacts to their new portfolio of solutions and how the larger players will respond.

 

    Leave Your Comment


     

    Loading
    Share via
    Copy link
    Powered by Social Snap