5 Reasons Why ExtremeCloud™ Provides the Right Foundation for Your Business Solution

The age of cloud networking is upon us. The modern enterprise demands agility, data durability, security and 24/7 availability, and a cloud-driven network is the foundation to enable that.

Cloud networking introduces a new way to deploy and manage networks. It delivers enterprise-class network management capabilities via a cloud infrastructure, that requires little or no capital investment in additional hardware and software platforms or in IT resources. Unlike traditional locally hosted on-premises solutions, cloud networking simplifies highly complex tasks, enabling organizations to deploy locations in minutes and providing unprecedented levels of centralized control and network visibility. 

Extreme Networks delivers cloud-driven, end-to-end Enterprise Networking for the emerging data-driven economy. This paper highlights five reasons why Extreme offers one of the most advanced cloud networking solutions in the market.

1. Introducing ExtremeCloud IQ 

ExtremeCloud™ IQ is an industry-leading and visionary approach to cloud-managed networking, built from the ground up to take full advantage of Extreme’s end-to-end networking solutions. ExtremeCloud IQ delivers unified, fullstack management of wireless access points, switches, and routers and enables onboarding, configuration, monitoring, troubleshooting, reporting, and more. Using innovative machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, ExtremeCloud IQ analyzes and interprets millions of network and user data points, from the network edge to the data center, to power actionable business and IT insights, and deliver new levels of network automation and intelligence.

ExtremeCloud IQ operates on Extreme's 4th generation Cloud Services architecture, capable of supporting millions of infrastructure devices and hundreds of millions of clients per Regional Data Center. All Extreme Cloud Services components are hosted in secure SOC Type 1 data centers with 24/7 monitoring, scheduled backups, and build-in disaster recovery capabilities.

ExtremeCloud IQ offers rapid feature velocity, increased availability, and advanced flexibility desired for modern access network management. Extreme Cloud Services also provides a full suite of cloud-optimized open APIs for developers to create 3rd party applications and user experiences including user onboarding mechanisms, proximity-based services, presence and location analytics, and more.

2. Highest Quality

Cloud Networking has evolved over the past decade, with each new ‘generation’ introducing enhanced capabilities (Figure 3). In contrast to the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation solutions in the market today, ExtremeCloud IQ offers a 4th generation solution that drives further innovation, scale, automation, and assurance, offering 11 9's reliability, containerized microservices, and a dynamic resource pool. In short, it provides a smarter, more flexible network that delivers more insights, and makes your life easier. 

3. Cloud Choice 

Extreme offers three cloud deployment options – Public, Private, or Local - that support one goal: to provide you with maximum flexibility, continuous innovation, and a consistent user experience. More-so, our 100% software centric architecture is Cloud-Hosting agnostic, supporting AWS, Google, MSFT, and more.

• Public Cloud: Extreme provides access to a hosted service which removes infrastructure management and costs, provides data privacy and protection, unmatched reliability, and continuous delivery of innovations. 
• Private Cloud: Designed for large MSPs and enterprise customers who require the scale and flexibility of our Public Cloud solution, but with the added control of deploying it in their own private AWS or Google instance, hosted by either the customer themselves or, preferably, Extreme Networks.  
• Local Cloud: The local cloud option condenses Extreme’s cloud service into a virtual machine which can be hosted on-premises at your site.

Regardless of which option you choose, ExtremeCloud offers the same capabilities and feature sets. More so, as your requirements change, so too can your deployment – there is no need to rip and replace. 

4. Depth of Capability

Through value-based licensing/SaaS tiering, Extreme is making it even easier for you to grow as you go, both in a technical and commercial sense. We offer the most flexible, feature-rich application tiers tailored to every business, budget, and IT need, delivering the management, intelligence, and assurance your business requires.

• Extreme Connect is our base level tier. It provides subscription-free cloud management for supported devices, enabling organizations to deploy enterprise grade connectivity with basic network management. 
• Extreme Pilot is targeted at organizations that require enhanced policy enforcement, visibility, reporting, and advanced configurations. It is a simple and seamless upgrade from Connect to Pilot. Pilot delivers configuration and management of infrastructure devices at scale including advanced policy, advanced segmentation, advanced troubleshooting, advanced guest, advanced SSH, etc.
• Extreme Co-Pilot unlocks additional machine learning tools, multi-cloud support, self-remediation, and automated configurations and software management. For example, the “Instant Context” capability reduces the volume of context-gathering activities required for support calls to near zero by implementing a machine learning-driven, intelligent support chat window that collects real-time and historical information about a device or client through input or drag-and drop functionality.
• Extreme Auto-Pilot utilizes the latest in AI techniques to further optimize network performance and protect your organization from growing threats such as IoT. It delivers cloud-driven Artificial Intelligence actions that proactively replace problematic infrastructure devices (i.e. Auto-RMA-Action), change infrastructure device configurations (i.e. Auto-DFS-Action), fix known bugs (i.e. Auto-Bug Fix-Action), advanced ML/AI-insights and trends over time, etc.

5. Huge Savings

Extreme offers an opportunity for Enterprises to significantly lower both capital and operational expenses, and create efficiencies with our end-to-end solution and superior support capabilities. A third-party economic validation assessment of Extreme networking solutions showed significant cost savings in several key areas including:

• 26% Lower Cost for Hardware and Software Purchases
• 30% Lower Cost for Support, Maintenance, and Professional Services
• 31% Lower Cost for power, cooling, and floorspace
• 35% Lower Cost for Daily Network Administration

Conclusion

As illustrated, Extreme delivers unparalleled breadth, quality, choice, depth and savings with our ExtremeCloud IQ Networking solution. With ExtremeCloud IQ, enterprises can say goodbye to the complex and inflexible on-premise networks of the past and move towards a cloud-driven network that will enable them to be more responsive to the business, maximize operational efficiency and increase their ability to innovate.