Trident Seafoods
How America's largest seafood company, Trident Seafoods, uses Extreme Platform ONE™ to simplify network management across nearly 30 facilities, from remote Alaska to operations around the globe.
Industry: Manufacturing
Region:
North America
Solutions: Extreme Platform ONE, Security, Wired
Trident Seafoods operates 30 facilities across North America, Europe, and Asia, with some sites located in remote parts of Alaska, where connectivity, environmental conditions, and power reliability create major operational challenges. To overcome limited visibility and operational complexity across the enterprise, Trident implemented Extreme switching, wireless, and Extreme Platform ONE™ for centralized network management.
10x
Backbone Capacity
1 Gbps → 10 Gbps to support high-bandwidth video traffic as a result of Extreme high-performance switching
300+
IP Cameras
At the largest plant, with hundreds more across nearly 30 remote sites
4-person
IT Team
manages a distributed global network with Extreme Platform ONE™ automation
5–6 emails
Reduced to One Dashboard
for faster troubleshooting and issue resolution
Shawn Leonard
Senior Manager of IT Infrastructure, Trident Seafoods
"My team is very lean. We've got roughly 80 stacks and another 40-ish standalone units. It's a manual process. We've got to touch every single configuration and it just takes time."
- Shawn Leonard, Senior Manager of IT Infrastructure, Trident Seafoods
Many of Trident's sites are so isolated that they rely on satellite or multi-carrier connectivity and some even generate their own power. This is one enterprise environment where operations are often at the mercy of nature.
Supporting that infrastructure falls to a lean IT team led by Shawn Leonard, Senior Manager of IT Infrastructure. The four-person team is responsible for keeping production, communications, and compliance systems online across harsh industrial environments where downtime can quickly affect business operations. With growing network demands, that consumes valuable engineering time.
"Our largest plant had over 300 cameras...it was just crushing the backbone. We just had gigabit fiber and the video traffic was killing everything else."
Limited connectivity across remote facilities and fishing vessels
Salt air, moisture, and unstable power affecting infrastructure
Growing demands on the network without additional IT headcount to support
Too many manual deployment and management tasks
"One of the intriguing points was the NAC offering that you guys have in your product. That kind of got us into POC, and we kicked the tires and replaced a lot of aging competitors' switches."
About 15 years ago, Extreme stood out to Trident because of its Network Access Control (NAC) capabilities. That led to the initial proof of concept. But over time, Trident replaced aging competitive infrastructure and Extreme consistently delivered dependable performance in environments where other equipment experienced failures. That reliability ultimately led to Trident deploying Extreme switching across much of its global network.
Today, Trident has implemented a networking architecture powered by Extreme switching, wireless, and Extreme Platform ONE.
Strong NAC capabilities
Reliable performance in harsh environments
Resilience against power fluctuations
Responsive hardware replacement
Confidence to replace aging infrastructure
"The appealing part of Platform ONE is being able to have those templates and those configs just baked in. If somebody can rack it and cable it, just push the config. That kind of automation is something we really want to make more use of in the next couple of years because we can't add bodies. So, we've got to automate more. Platform ONE, I think, is going to be a really good opportunity to do that.
Extreme Platform ONE is helping Trident replace manual work with standardized templates, centralized visibility, and automation. Engineers can troubleshoot directly from a single dashboard instead of exchanging multiple emails between teams.
Accelerate switch configurations through reusable templates
Reduce manual deployment and administration
Centralize network visibility
Execute faster troubleshooting with device-level insights
Open the door for AI-driven automation that expands the IT team’s capacity
"One of the things I really like on the wireless side is client traceability, where you can drill down. You can see if someone's having trouble accessing (applications) or they're getting dropped and just pinpoint that device to see what the traffic log looks like. All that stuff is right there in the dashboard."
With Platform ONE, Trident expects automation and centralized management to help its infrastructure team support continued business growth while reducing operational complexity.
Reliable networking across harsh industrial environments
Enterprise-wide switching standardization
Improved operational resilience
Less manual network administration
Better visibility across distributed infrastructure
For 15 years, Extreme has provided the network foundation supporting Trident’s distributed operations. Now with Platform ONE, the team is positioned to scale through automation rather than additional headcount.
Looking forward, Trident's lean and efficient IT team is anticipating additional outcomes that will help their team scale and expand capacity even without adding staff. Leonard and his team expect to accomplish faster troubleshooting workflows via Extreme Platform ONE, with simplified day-to-day management, and the team is currently planning a wireless shift with Extreme as well.
When that change happens, the fishing weather, tides, and elements may remain unpredictable. Yet this small-but-mighty IT team will be positioned so that network management is nothing but smooth sailing.
“We’ve had good reliability for 15 years with Extreme. Now, I think with what we've seen with Platform ONE, is that you have that single pane where you can go and drill down...for that alone, Extreme saves so much of my team’s time.”
- Shawn Leonard, Senior Manager of IT Infrastructure, Trident Seafoods