In my spare time, I like to sketch anything that fascinates me. So, when I learned about Extreme Networks’ success at being placed as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure for the fourth year in a row, I immediately began to sketch Rocky Balboa, the character from the famous film “Rocky.” One look at Rocky’s intense eyes made it clear why he was able to punch above his weight. His focus and work ethic helped him turn around his fortunes from being an unknown entity to become a superb fighter who eventually won many fights. In the enterprise networking arena, Extreme Networks may not necessarily be as well-known as the brash, undefeated champion Apollo Creed. However Extreme Networks is a proven contender with championship success, and significant momentum from our side. Our competitors are 10 to 100x larger in terms of market capitalization. We believe we are the Rocky Balboa in this space. Our relentless focus on executing toward the Infinite Enterprise vision will lead us to success.
Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure
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Extreme Networks is on a mission to reduce the complexity of running increasingly distributed networks at scale. Over the last few years, Extreme has continued to deliver consistently on our vision with superb execution. As seen in Figure 1, the latest stamp of success is being positioned as a leader in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, the fourth year in a row.
Here are the key insights on why customers and partners embrace Extreme Networks:
Extreme Networks is the only vendor with a cloud-agnostic architecture that offers customers the same functionality irrespective of their choice of cloud provider or cloud location. Customers can manage their enterprise network environment from ExtremeCloud IQ hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services (AWS). This deployment can be done in the public, private cloud, or on-premises cloud. To ensure the highest levels of information systems and data protection, management, and compliance, ExtremeCloud IQ cloud platform conforms to ISO / IEC 27017 and is certified by DQS to ISO / IEC 27001 and ISO / IEC 27701 by the International Standards Organization (ISO).
Furthermore, while every enterprise vendor claims that telemetry data is the source of their Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), they limit the data to a few weeks. The more telemetry data companies can harness, the better informed their decision-making could be, and the greater their opportunity to optimize operations and enhance customer experiences. Wouldn’t it be great to compare the footfall analytics in a retail store trending over the last years? How about the comparison of the network performance between software upgrades? Would you like to compare the traffic lines across bank tellers over time? What about comparing network analytics between device upgrades across multiple months/years? How about comparing the performance since the refresh of your network to the latest product line? Do you want to compare the rogues, the interferers across many quarters? Therefore, unlimited data matters!
ExtremeCloud IQ offers the industry’s first unlimited data plan, which means our customers have access to their entire historical data sets throughout their service agreement. This enables customers to make data-driven decisions. To learn more about this, please review this whitepaper.
Talk of AI/ML is so prevalent in the industry that it is hard to identify when it adds value or where it has a place in the story. Extreme’s approach is unique in the industry. You should know that Extreme is the 2nd largest and fastest-growing cloud networking company and the only cloud networking company to offer you unlimited data. We help organizations by not only utilizing the power of analytics to harness data and process it faster, smarter, and more efficiently – but by making it understandable. Therefore, the next AI superpower is Explainability which is driven primarily by the choice of algorithms that are used to predict and manage anomalies. To learn more about Explainability, see this blog.
CoPilot offers you to get a birds-eye view of the overall network, the license consumption, the anomalies associated to users, the network, and devices. Given the complexities of IT networks and the scope of the anomalies observed, CoPilot further subdivides observations into two areas: network-wide issues and localized network issues. The focus is on critical yet often-seen problems with DHCP, DNS, and RADIUS which might disrupt wireless communications. Ethernet cable, PoE, and multicast data anomalies may also impact the user experience. Some of the issues introduced are related to the connectivity medium, such as Wi-Fi Capacity and Wi-Fi Efficiency. Other issues might be related to connectivity between various devices. For example, PoE Efficiency or Port Efficiency, which deals with whether the switch port to which the Wi-Fi 6E Access Point is connected, provides consistent PoE and Backhaul speed. Simple explanations provide guidance to identify the root cause of the anomaly, verify the anomaly with the network data, and resolve the issue.
Read more about CoPilot here.
Customers may decide to manage their offerings on-premises today and transition to the cloud tomorrow. Our architecture decouples the software from the underlying hardware and enables us to offer a single Universal hardware platform coupled with a single license for deployment in any mode. Learn more about this here.
“Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up!” – Rocky Balboa
At Extreme Networks, we are very proud of being positioned as a Leader for the fourth year in a row in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure. However, trust me when I say we are not finished yet, as we continue to contend in the arena of the Infinite Enterprise.
Reach out to your friendly partner or Extreme seller to learn more. To get a copy of the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant report, click here.
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This blog was originally authored by Jeevan Patil, Senior Director, Product Management
