Our recent closing of Avaya was significant for a number of reasons. It is the second in a series of strategic acquisitions announced in the last year that will help make Extreme the #3 player in the enterprise networking industry. This is combined with our #1 ranked customer service and support according to Gartner. When combined with the anticipated close of Brocade’s data center networking business in September/October, we will be over $1 billion in annual revenues and we’ll be the only company hyper-focused on delivering end-to-end software-driven solutions to enterprise customers.
We were excited at the great turnout for our two informational webinars on the combined ro5admaps of Extreme and Avaya, which also covered support, warranty and partner updates. We received a lot of inquiries during and following the webinars that is important to reiterate in this blog for anyone who wasn’t able to join us or is looking for more information. As always, please feel free to schedule a session with our sales and product line management teams for more in-depth feedback and interaction.
Before jumping in, I want to reiterate to our new customers and partners that your business continuity is of the upmost importance to us during this transition period. Our integrated product roadmap, services and partner program were designed with you in mind to ensure that the investments you’ve made in Avaya technology are preserved.
Specifically looking at the roadmap, it’s exciting to communicate to you the upcoming software and technology solutions planned from our combined product teams this year. We’re building off the momentum of recent launches like ExtremeManagementTM 8.0 and the ERS 3600 to expand our portfolio of solutions tailored to the enterprise campus market. A prime example is our upcoming VSP 8600 product launch, which will be announced this month. This brand new, modular, high-density platform is built for the future and a solution that fills a key product gap in our portfolio. Everything that comes along with Avaya’s fabric technology – simplicity, agility and resiliency – is integrated into VSP 8600, truly demonstrating how this acquisition has strengthened Extreme’s offering.
In addition, we have exciting news on our ExtremeCloud TM solution. Not only is ExtremeCloud 4.0 more feature rich than competitive products on the market, but we have more updates slated for the summer and fall, in addition to several switching and software announcements that will bring unmatched simplicity, resiliency and agility to your network environment. It’s important to note that we are committed to providing and preserving the natural and normal life of all of our products, meaning nothing will be prematurely retired or rationalized for end of life.
In terms of customer service and support – it’s what we do best and the goal of making our customers and partners successful is truly a guiding principle for the entire Extreme team. We truly care more about our customers than any other company in the industry – proven by our 100% insourced support team and over 90% first person resolution rate. Underlining our entire portfolio is our award winning customer service program, ExtremeWorks, which is currently the most reviewed and second highest rated for Service & Support on Gartner Peer Insights.
In an effort to ease the transition for our new customers, we will continue honoring Avaya pricing support levels, as well as any networking service contracts signed before July 14, 2017. All existing Avaya networking warranties will carry over to Extreme. For purchases post close, Avaya warranty offers will be mapped to Extreme with the goal of providing equal or better coverage.
The Avaya support portal will be live for the next 12 months to avoid any disruption to your service. Shortly, ExtremeWorks and PartnerWorks service SKUs will be added to all Avaya products and price lists will be updated with new offers for the Avaya product portfolio. We look forward to extending our award winning customer support to all of our new customers, and continuing to provide our existing customers on the industry’s #1 service and support.
Our commitment to customers is echoed in our approach to partners, with a new unified partner program that will be announced at our Partner Summit in October 2017. In the meantime, Extreme partners will now have access to Avaya’s industry-leading fabric technology and will be on boarded by the Avaya tech and sales teams to become more familiar with our new offering. Avaya partners will also be able to continue on the Avaya partner program until October 2017, and will be fast-tracked to the Extreme Partner Program (EPN) if they choose to start selling the Extreme portfolio.
We look forward to providing you with more information about next steps and will be rolling out a series of customer and partner webinars in the coming months.
For more info – check out the acquisition site where you can find the webinar series, FAQs, partner information and all other materials related to the news. Please share your comments with us – we are excited to have you join the Extreme Customer Community!
