The new SD-WAN capabilities, which are now fully integrated into the cloud, come from Extreme’s acquisition of Ipanema, while the AIOps with Digital Twin capabilities becomes Extreme’s new top of the line cloud management, above Extreme Cloud IQ Co-Pilot.
Andy Leong, Head of Product Marketing at Extreme Networks
At their recent Extreme Connect event in Nashville, Extreme Networks announced a series of new solutions. They included the 5720 Universal Switch, the latest in a series of high-performance, feature-rich wired and wireless enterprise solutions. Extreme has also extended its ExtremeCloud portfolio to include new SD-WAN and AIOps with Digital Twin capabilities.
The new switch is the 5720 Universal Switch, which Extreme sees as an ideal companion to WiFi6E.
“We built this line of unique universal switches which can run everything right out of the box,” said Andy Leong, Head of Product Marketing at Extreme Networks. “It becomes the top end of the product suite, with auto sensing, and industry-leading capabilities to support 90w PoE. It is built to optimize WiFi6E, which has a lot more spectrums. Other vendors say that WiFi 6E isn’t ready, that supply hasn’t adapted and that they should wait for WiFi7. The 5720 Switch counters that, because it is very well suited with WiFi6E.”
Extreme Networks had SD-WAN capabilities before, but they were much more limited than what they are rolling out now. The new technology is based on last fall’s acquisition of Ipanema.
“We had had limited SD-WAN capability before in our routers, but they weren’t true SD-WAN,” Leong said. “These legacy routers weren’t well suited to handle customers’ move to the cloud. We now have a full-fledged cloud solution that can manage wired, wireless and SD-WAN from a single platform. It is fully connected to the Extreme cloud, and we have packaged it in a very unique way where we integrate all the hardware, maintenance and support into a single subscription of 12-36 months.”
The SD-WAN also offers a range of security options from built-in firewall to advanced cloud security using EdgeSentry (powered by Checkpoint).
Extreme also announced their ExtremeCloud IQ CoPilot AIOps solution, their new top of the line cloud management solution with the networking industry’s first Digital Twin and explainable machine learning.The new SD-WAN capabilities, which are now fully integrated into the cloud, come from Extreme’s acquisition of Ipanema, while the AIOps with Digital Twin capabilities stand upon Extreme’s top of the line cloud management, Extreme Cloud IQ CoPilot.
“Digital twins have been around a while, but we are the first to do it at a networking equipment level,” Leong noted. “We now have this for our universal switch platforms, all of which is an order of complexity to clone a switch and to put it into the cloud. We have announced this for wired. Next comes wireless for APs. In our current supply chain-constrained world, customers have to wait to take delivery, but we can get a staging and deployment down to a matter of minutes.”
The new offering goes above Pilot and is part of the premium CoPilot license.
“We will continue to leverage Pilot, but with CoPilot, we have a step above,” Leong said. We allow customers to see the magic underneath the machine so they can see how a recommendation occurs. That way, over time they can easily trust what our ML and AI engine prescribes.”
The ideal target customer segment is from the high end of the medium enterprise to large enterprise.
“They really fit that customer profile, because the more complex the environment, the more valuable solution become at the high end of the portfolio,” Leong stated.
