Extreme Networks CEO Ed Meyercord expects a surge in market opportunities tied to growing upheaval at larger rivals Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Cisco but does not expect those opportunities to shake the vendor’s core focus on the enterprise market.

Meyercord has talked in the past of current market uncertainties that have shed more light on Extreme’s position in the market. HPE’s recent close on its Juniper acquisition is set to further amplify that task.

Analysts have noted that HPE will have to move quickly on integrating Juniper to maintain market momentum, a feat that could be impacted by background drama.

Meyercord told SDxCentral in an interview that the vendor has mostly seen anecdotal evidence of HPE and Juniper customer discontent, but “we've had a couple of bluebirds just fly right in, saying, ‘I'm not dealing with this, I'm going with you.’” Meyercord added that he thinks this initial slow burn is due to HPE and Juniper customers expecting that deal to not close until later this year due to expectations of a court date.

This timing lag is similar to what VMware rivals are experiencing as part of that vendor’s acquisition by Broadcom, but for different reasons. Many of those VMware rivals have noted a delay in their ability to notch conquest customer victories due to many of those legacy VMware customers re-upping on previous terms before that deal closed and by Broadcom’s aggression in signing up larger customers to new deals.

Meyercord did note that Extreme is signing up disgruntled and discarded Juniper employees.

“We're hiring Juniper employees – less so HPE, but more Juniper – where we have opportunities to upgrade or if we're just filling up spots,” Meyercord said.

Cisco channel chaos

Meyercord during Extreme’s earnings call also touted progress in attracting more channel partners. This includes doubling its managed service provider (MSP) channel to 53 partners during its most recent fiscal year, bolstered by the recent implementation of an automated billing cycle for those channel partners.

Meyercord said Extreme sees more channel opportunities due to Cisco’s recently implemented changes to its program. Cisco’s channel partner changes are similar to ones deployed by Broadcom, which has focused on those partners willing to commit more fully to Broadcom’s platform push.

“I think partners are coin operated, just like sellers are coin operated … you're in business to make money and if you feel like at some point … I'm just going to consider this, and I think we're seeing more of that and I think we're going to continue to see more and more of that as we go forward,” Meyercord said. “And that's part of the opportunity for Extreme, where you go out in the industry and feel like I can make a lot more money if I'm selling through Extreme.”

Those partners could benefit from Extreme’s recently launched agentic AI-focused Platform One product. That product is touted as a way for network operators to identify bandwidth spikes and security threats, and set guardrails around risk and compliance, while the system works to optimize performance and reliability.

Meyercord told investors that the platform is still new, “but what we're expecting is for this to come into play in the second half of the year before you see meaningful impact of the business.”

“What we're guiding is that it's going to help fuel customers decisions to go with Extreme knowing that they can upgrade to Platform One,” Meyercord said. “We're expecting customers to trial, test, play around with the platform, and then we're expecting some serious migrations to happen as we turn the corner on the calendar year.”

Extreme excited for market dynamics

Extreme’s platform bolstering could be important moving forward as rivals continue to enhance their focus on the enterprise space. Meyercord explained that HPE’s enterprise networking business could move upmarket with Juniper.

“In our market, HPE has been the low-price player. Their margins have been the lowest. They're in a very low-margin server business. It's going to be interesting, culturally, to see how this mixes with Juniper because Juniper has been one of the more higher-priced players,” Meyercord said. “Everyone kind of prices under the Cisco umbrella, and there's usually a fair amount of room there until they want to get very aggressive. But now you have this culture where Juniper is like, ‘hey, we're a premium product.’ HPE is like, ‘we're the cheapest.’ We'll see how that comes together.”

Arista Networks is also one of those new potential market rivals. Arista recently acquired SD-WAN vendor VeloCloud from Broadcom in a move to bolster Arista’s presence in the traditional enterprise space.

Meyercord said he could see Arista’s decision to expand “out of the cloud” from its continued reliance on large, hyperscale player toward the broader enterprise market, but that they have so far not “run into them very frequently.”

“They're also at a disadvantage in terms of they're using the Jericho chipset for Broadcom, which is just meant for data center. We're on the Trident platform, which is meant for enterprise,” Meyercord explained. “So we have a platform that's feature rich. We could do all these things for enterprise customers. They can’t do them.”

Despite market drama, Meyercord said Extreme remains focused on its core enterprise base, noting that the vendor’s modest overall market share provides “plenty of room for us to grow, and if we stay really focused this is where we're able to take share.”