Enterasys has made us twice as powerful, claims Extreme

Steve Johnson lays out benefits of union for VAR partners as he is named managing director of enlarged UK business

Extreme Networks' UK boss claims its partner proposition is "twice as powerful" following the integration of recent acquisition Enterasys.

Extreme closed its $180m (£108m) purchase of Enterasys on 31 October in a move it claims makes it the world's fifth-largest Ethernet switching company.

Enterasys' similar stature to Extreme has allowed the vendor to complete the bulk of the integration work in 100 days, said Steve Johnson, who has retained the role of UK and Ireland director of the enlarged organisation.

"We've moved at a rapid pace but not so rapidly that anything has fallen through the fingers, and what's enabled to us to do that is that we are merging two similar-sized organisations," he said.

"Each set of partners is now working with an organisation that has twice the scale, twice the R&D investment and twice the support investment."

Legacy Extreme UK management appear to have been given the nod over their opposite numbers at Enterasys, with Johnson keeping hold of the UK reins and Extreme's UK and Ireland channel director Chris Elliot also retaining the same role.

CRN understands that Enterasys' long-standing UK country manager, Dean Jones, has moved on as a result. However, at a global level, Enterasys chief executive Chris Crowell has been named as COO while Vala Afshar has retained his position as CMO.

"Everyone is now in their roles and we've managed to collapse the CRM tools together, which could have been a speed bump, but hasn't been," said Johnson. "It's been a rapid turnaround."

Extreme's global sales nearly doubled year on year to $146.6m in its most recent quarter as Enterasys chipped in two full months' contribution. Johnson said the addition of Enterasys bolsters its wireless, NAC and BYOD capabilities, while allowing legacy Enterasys partners to benefit from Extreme's strength in the datacentre.

But he also urged partners to embrace Purview, a network-powered application analytics and optimisation solution Extreme launched earlier this month that harnesses technology from both legacy brands.

Purview will make the network more strategically important by giving customers the ability to look at application flows across the network, Johnson said.

"Purview is not just best of breed, but first of breed and will be of massive value to channel partners from both legacies," he said. "It will give them a unique opportunity to have a different conversation with their customers."

Mahmood Chaudri, managing director of Datrix, which claims it was Enterasys' top partner before the merger, agreed that Purview would be a "game changer" in the networking space.

"Enterasys was always been our favourite partner and now the two brands have come together that's still the case," he added. "It's amazing how similar the two are in terms of their mentality and the integration has been seamless."

Extreme Networks now has five UK distributors after a sixth, Cloud Distribution, opted to walk away from the partnership shortly after the merger. These are Westcon, Exclusive Networks, Mayflex, Scansource and Arrow, all of which Johnson said he expects to continue working with if they "demonstrate value to the new business".

Adam Davison, director of Cloud Distribution, which only signed as an Enterasys distributor last year, said: "Extreme wanted to focus on its core portfolio and we wanted to focus on security. With all the changes and disruptions, it didn't make sense for us to work with them."