Extreme Networks updated its SD-WAN platform to allow users to extend network fabrics across separate data center, campus, and branch locations.

The updates tap into Extreme’s Fabric Connect product, software that automates discovery and configuration of the company’s “fabric-enabled” switches and access points, making it easier to deploy new devices with consistent security policy across a network area.

Rob Hull, director of product marketing at Extreme, explained that Fabric Connect has been useful mostly in large site or campus LAN scenarios. Extreme’s SD-WAN customers that connect disparate sites can now extend those automated discovery and configuration capabilities to smaller branch sites.

“You can benefit from the low-cost internet access and you can benefit from the security and the application control that our SD-WAN provides,” Hull told SDxCentral. “Your main campus discovers all of the switches at your smaller sites and configures them and implements all of the fabric security rules with no humans involved.”

The extensions also allows network management teams to implement a network fabric’s security policy across all sites and use hyper-segmentation to increase network security by preventing lateral attacks without actually needing an IT team to configure each location.

“The network stack, the map, the management is consolidated, which basically means now that same person that's managing the campus can manage those local IT estates,” Hull explained.

Extreme also introduced an automated approach for connecting to major cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Hull noted that SD-WAN vendors typically use fiber to create what he said is “almost an internet bypass service,” which runs from the SD-WAN to a cloud provider’s on-ramp. Extreme’s new approach depends on software routes across the internet using internet protocol security (IPSec) tunnels to connect to the cloud, without installing or managing SD-WAN appliances or software in the cloud service provider’s environment.

“We can monitor how well the traffic is going from your SD-WAN, all the way to Amazon or all the way to Microsoft. And it's very simple to deploy because it's software,” Hull said.

“The whole thing about software-defined networks is you want to avoid the hardware,” he added. “You have to have hardware at your site, obviously, to act as the filter and the security layer and the control mechanism between your LAN and the WAN, but if you're actually going across the internet, see if you can define that quality of service and the monitoring with software rather than hardware.”

Additionally, Extreme announced a new IPE2200 hardware appliance as part of its SD-WAN subscription to support high-bandwidth data center use cases. The appliance, which can support 10 Gb/s internet, is mainly targeted at large campus environments that need to support a large volume of traffic including heavy use of video collaboration services.

Dan DeBacker, SVP of product management at Extreme, said the company’s approach to network and security is “layered.” He pointed to several Extreme acquisitions between 2016 to 2021 – including Aerohive, Avaya, Brocade Ipanema, and Zebra Technologies – that brought “a lot of technology” to build on that approach.

“So now we're taking all of these different technologies, some overlap, some don't, and really looking at, okay, how do we create this one holistic solution,” DeBacker said, “The ability to have access control, enhance our fabric solutions with policy and control, and provide technologies that allow access at the very edge.”

Extreme pulled in record revenues during its most recent fiscal quarter. The vendor posted $380 million in revenue, which was a 13% increase compared to the same quarter last year, and a 7% increase sequentially.

CEO Ed Meyercord attributed the growth to Extreme’s software subscription, cloud networking and fabric capabilities, and $555 million of sales backlog due to ongoing supply chain issues.

“The consistency of our results is something that means a lot, because it's 11 quarters in a row of hitting our numbers,” Meyercord told SDxCentral. “And the fact that we're the fastest growing player in the networking industry means that we're taking share from larger players.”