Networking News
Extreme Networks’ Ed Meyercord On Hitting $1B In Revenue And Battling Cisco For Cloud Networking Dominance
Gina Narcisi
Extreme Networks is the number two cloud in networking today. That’s because they’re winning deals and ‘raising their batting average’ against the likes of Cisco, as evidenced by record-breaking cloud and revenue growth, according to the company’s CEO Ed Meyercord.
Raising The Bar
Since its acquisition of Aerohive Networks in 2019, Extreme Networks has climbed its way to the second-place spot in the cloud networking space, a segment that’s only been on the rise over the last two years, especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and businesses around the globe rethinking their IT needs.
Year over year, Extreme’s cloud growth has been explosive, and it’s been largely driven by channel partners, Ed Meyercord, Extreme Networks’ president and CEO, told CRN. In fact, the San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant reported 111 percent growth in cloud year over year during its Q4 2021 earnings call, with 29 percent overall revenue growth and 36 percent year over year bookings growth during its fiscal fourth quarter. For the entire fiscal year, Extreme posted record-setting revenue of more than $1 billion.
That’s all thanks to Extreme’s cloud-managed Wi-Fi experience, along with its analytics, location-based services, and security offerings. Meyercord talked with CRN about how the company is stealing wallet share from its competitors, how its growth rate is more than ten times that of Cisco and that its Aerohive acquisition is the best deal the company has ever made, and the opportunity around next-generation networking and Wi-Fi solutions, including the “game-changing” Wi-Fi 6E, for Extreme’s channel partners.
Here’s what Meyercord had to say.
