City of Everett Leaps from Legacy to Leadership, Saves Up to $1.5M

Everett, Washington is a large city with a population of 115,000, and one of the state’s most dynamic hubs of industry and innovation. When Everett was ready to replace its aging Cisco network, they knew that a Network-Infrastructure-as-a-Service (NIaaS) consumption model would align with their needs for implementing a modern network that had room (and a plan) to grow.

After meeting Extreme’s team at ACCIS several years ago, Everett chose Extreme for a fast, resilient, AI-powered network. Revisiting the results, it is clear: today, the City of Everett works smarter, with a network that delivers value and is built for the future.

For years, Everett was stuck with outdated technology and growing technical debt. Tight budgets forced the IT team into piecemeal upgrades every five to seven years, leaving critical systems running on aging HP and Cisco gear with expired support and security patches. What’s more, Cisco’s complicated licensing structure and lack of flexibility left the city with concerns around the long-term performance and value of what they had in place. A cycle of stopgap fixes slowed innovation, increased risk, and drove up costs.

Limited network visibility, complex troubleshooting, and a small IT staff made daily operations harder than necessary — and complex management of the network did not help. Unpredictable expenses further complicated long-term planning and threatened the city’s ability to meet the needs of the growing community.

Working directly with their own city council to evaluate the NIaaS model, Everett was ready to move forward and head in a new direction with Extreme.

Extreme’s ease and simplicity, with Zero Touch Provisioning and automations via Extreme Fabric caught the eye of the Everett team. A Fabric demonstration and NIaaS value graphic went even further in helping them visualize the path forward.

And when it came to predictable budget cycles, Extreme offered a way out: An NIaaS, subscription-based, OPEX-friendly model capable of delivering a fully managed, modern network. This allowed Everett to refresh its entire environment at once instead of relying on incremental, reactive upgrades.

The decision ultimately became an easy one, based on checking off the boxes Everett knew would be most critical to get their team and the city fully on board:

• Full Network Refresh: Eliminated legacy equipment and technical debt, creating a foundation for innovation.
• Fabric-Based Architecture: Improved segmentation, strengthened security, reduced attack surfaces, and enabled effortless adds, moves, and changes. Extreme Fabric’s sub-second convergence ensured essential services stayed online during outages.
• Automated Provisioning & Zero-Touch Onboarding: Accelerated citywide deployments to hours instead of days.
• Advanced Visibility & Control: ExtremeCloud provided a single dashboard for all switches, access points, users, and devices, simplifying issue detection.
• Training & Partnership: Extreme upskilled staff and provided ongoing guidance.
• Predictable Subscription Pricing: Simplified budgeting and asset tracking.

Extreme Networks gained a competitive edge over Cisco by delivering simplicity, flexibility, and predictable value that legacy Cisco solutions could not match. The NIaaS model offered a fully managed, subscription-based network with Zero-Touch Provisioning, automated Fabric, and OpEX-focused cost predictability, while a “BoB” Fabric demonstration showcased faster deployment and sub-second convergence.

Combined with strong partner collaboration and direct engagement, Extreme provided performance, adaptability, and financial clarity that made Cisco impractical and positioned Extreme as the superior choice.

Extreme Fabric provides the City of Everett with a highly automated, policy-driven network that simplifies deployment and enhances security. Zero-Touch provisioning with Fabric enables rapid, automated rollouts, while policy-based controls ensure that network access and segmentation are determined by user role, regardless of physical location.

This level of flexibility allows services to span wired and wireless environments seamlessly, with technologies like Fabric Attach maintaining secure segmentation across the entire network. The result is a scalable, resilient infrastructure that supports dynamic connectivity and strong security without bogging down Everett’s team with time-consuming, manual intervention.

Using Extreme’s NIaaS model, Everett replaced uncertainty and complexity with predictable costs, streamlined operations, and a future-ready architecture. The shift modernized the network, empowered staff, strengthened security, and improved citywide service delivery.

• Cost Savings: Up to $1.5M saved over seven years across hardware, tools, and services. Predictable pricing freed budget for strategic initiatives.
• Operational Efficiency: Network rollouts dropped from days to hours.
• Security & Compliance: End-to-end visibility enabled rapid anomaly detection and reliable compliance.
• Staff Empowerment: Hands-on training built confidence and expanded the team’s ability to troubleshoot and manage operations.
• Scalability & Flexibility: Fabric architecture allows seamless service delivery across locations while removing the complexity that once slowed change.
• A Strong Partnership: The city called Extreme’s support and training “the best vendor relationship” they’d ever had.

Today, Everett isn’t just keeping pace; it’s leading the way, innovating boldly, delivering faster, and providing exceptional, future-ready services to its community, a digital transformation designed for lasting growth, agility, and resilience.