5 Reasons Extreme Expects To Win More Enterprise Networking Share

Extreme Networks is laser-focused on winning more market share in the enterprise networking space through its slew of newZebra,AvayaandBrocade Communicationstechnologies acquired over the past 12 months.

"This is absolutely the broadest portfolio that we've ever had. Not only the broadest, but the depth as well," said Dan Dulac, vice president of product management and strategy for Extreme, in an interview with CRN.

"The way we think about Extreme now in the marketplace, is we are really the only alternative to Cisco as it relates to end-to-end, the data center and all the way out to the wireless edge. [Hewlett-Packard Enterprise] is actually backing out of the data center," said Dulac. "We can now also go head-to-head with Arista [Networks] technologies."

[Related:Live At Extreme Networks Global Partner Summit 2017]

The San Jose, Calif.-based networking vendor is arguably making its biggest enterprise offensive in years with the new Extreme Partner Program and arsenal of technologies.

Additionally, Extreme acquired large customer accounts held by Avaya, Brocade and Zebra including Walmart and FedEx.

"The go-to-market opportunity is to go into our install base and expand our solutions at these additional places in the network with our purpose-built technology, whether it be in campus or data center. By being successful there, we'll also take market share from everybody else," said Dulac.

Here are five reasons why Extreme says it could win market share from the likes of Cisco, HPE-Aruba and Arista.

1. Brocade's switching, routing and analytics products will carry Extreme's data center charge.

2. Avaya's fabric technology will expand its depth in the campus WAN market

3. Its recent acquisitions bring an impressive list of customers into the Extreme fold, including UPS, FedEx, Lowes and Wal-mart, creating opportunities to sell the rest of the company's portfolio to those clients.

4. The majority of Extreme's business comes through the channel. It's new unified partner program has greater up-front discounts, and other tools to help partners ramp up across all facets of the Extreme portfolio.

5. With Cisco focused on numerous application acquisitions, Extreme says it's now the only pure-play networking company focused solely on driving networking innovation from the data center to the campus to the edge, whether wired or wireless.