Following the acquisition of Aerohive Networks, there will be slightly more than 10,000 partners participating in channel programs administered by Extreme Networks that ultimately serves about 50,000 customers.
The now completed $272 million acquisition of Aerohive Networks brings together a provider of wireless networks and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) appliances managed via the cloud with a provider of Ethernet switches.
The acquisition represents a major opportunity for Extreme Networks to start shifting the control plane for networking services into the cloud, says Norman Rice, chief marketing, development and product operations officer. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean WiFi networks and SD-WAN services will be converging at a unified software-defined branch office any time soon, says Rice. The teams generally responsible for acquiring and deploying next-generation WiFi 6 networks are not the same as the team that manages the wide-area network (WAN), says Rice.
“WiFi 6 and SD-WAN will remain separate,” says Rice.
The challenge and opportunity Extreme Networks now faces is educating Aerohive Networks partners that are generally familiar with WiFi networks on how to sell and manage the rest of the Extreme Networks portfolio against the offerings from Cisco and other rivals. That Extreme Networks portfolio now spans products and technologies that the company has rolled up via acquisitions involving Digital, Chantry, Siemens, Cabletron, Enterasys, AirDefense, Symbol, Motorola, Zebra, Wellfleet, SynOptics, Bay Networks, Nortel Networks, Avaya, Vistapointe, StackStorm, Foundry Networks, and Brocade. Collectively, Extreme Networks claims that portfolio now generates more than $1 billion in annual revenues, making it the third largest provider of networking equipment behind Cisco and Juniper Networks.
Under new leadership of CEO Ed Meyercord it’s not clear what other networking technologies Extreme Networks might seek to roll up next. However, the one thing that is certain is over time all these technologies in one form or another will soon be managed by partners via the cloud.
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