Extreme Networks CEO Ed Meyercord launched pointed attacks at larger networking rivals Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Cisco, noting that his firm continued to benefit from integration challenges and focus drift at those rivals that were bolstering Extreme Networks position in the market.

Meyercord told investor’s during Extreme Networks earnings call for the first quarter (Q1) of its fiscal 2027, that the vendor was benefitting from a handful of “market conditions … working in our favor.” Those included “competitor refresh cycles, Wi-Fi upgrades, and the disruption from the HPE and Juniper integration,” a trio that are “creating a multi-year opportunity.”

Meyercord later expanded at the initial return of those long-term opportunities, starting with HPE and Juniper Networks.

“People may have seen their ads about self-driving network, and their ad is very far away from the truth of what they're actually delivering to customers, and that's not lost on customers. And there's a discrepancy between wired and wireless, and cloud and non-cloud. And Mist has had a very strong competitive position, and they've fallen back,” Meyercord proffered. “And then there's a question about how the Aruba portfolio and how that will even fit. They said those two product portfolios won't come together, so if you're an enterprise customer making a long-term decision, it introduces a fair amount of risk depending on where your technology sits today.”

Meyercord had previously noted that HPE had always been a lower-priced, lower-margin player in the market as opposed to Juniper Networks, which Meyercord said was more of a direct competitor to Extreme.

“HPE has a lot of margin pressure and they can't afford to lower Juniper prices, they just can't,” Meyercord told SDxCentral during an interview earlier this year.

Cisco challenges

Meyercord during the latest earnings call then turned to Cisco, noting that the market giant has expanded its market purview to the detriment of its networking legacy.

“Cisco is focused on a lot of other things besides networking, and they're the most aggressive in raising price, and so, if you're looking for the most complicated bundle of solutions and the most expensive, it's Cisco,” Meyercord said, adding that this is also playing out through Cisco’s recently overhauled sales channel environment.

“They're meeting in Vancouver. They're asking their channel partners to do a lot more, try to sell the entire portfolio, and that's not necessarily what people want in the networking world, where buying cycles are different, buyers are different, and there's not necessarily this synergistic fit between what they're trying to mash together, so that creates some frustration, and it creates opportunities for us where people view their ability to make more money from the channel, where they can make more money with Extreme on the networking side,” Meyercord said.

Cisco did indeed recently hold its annual partner program summit in Vancouver, an event that included a host of platform and program updates.

Meyercord during the latest earnings call also hinted that Extreme Networks recently replaced Cisco at a large Austrian bank.

“I mean, in that case, this was a win against one of the largest players in the industry, I should mention,” Meyercord said with a chuckle. It was less about them leaving. It was more about them coming to Extreme. We talk about Cisco fatigue in the marketplace, and that ebbs and flows.”

Gartner recently located Extreme Networks in the “visionaries” box of its Magic Quadrant for enterprise wired and wireless local area network (LAN) providers. That ranking was alongside rivals Fortinet, Nile, and Meter, and behind market “leaders” Cisco, Huawei, and HPE.

Pricing and Platform One opportunities

Outside of specific rival moves, Meyercord explained that Extreme Networks had been more conservative in raising prices – despite previously touting the “price inelasticity of networking” – as opposed to rivals, something that Extreme could leverage to improve its operating margins.

“We hear this from distributors, partners, and customers that the bigger players have been raising price more aggressively,” Meyercord said. “So I would say we still have room there, but we've been able to deliver the margins with what we’ve done so far.”

Extreme Networks also expects a more rapid uptake of its agentic AI-focused Platform One offering that was unveiled last year. Meyercord noted that 10% of its customers were using that platform at the end of its last fiscal year, with that rate predicted to hit 50% at the end of the current fiscal year, and to 80% at the end of its fiscal 2028.

“Our teams commercially have done a great job positioning and selling Platform One,” Meyercord said. “I think you can see demand for the most modern industry tools, and also the differentiation that we bring. It does from a new logo perspective, the market is interested in how to leverage AI and how to leverage modern networking tools, the most modern networking tools as they consider investments into the future. So it's giving Extreme more at-bats and more opportunities.”

Those opportunities are important as Platform One is driving increased recurring revenues and margins for the vendor.

One topic Meyercord did not touch on was the vendor’s recent admission to the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation that a former Extreme Networks subsidiary in Russia had diverted networking equipment to a Russian defense contractor behind air defense systems deployed in Ukraine.

According to the DOJ, staff at Extreme’s former Russian subsidiary concealed the identity of Moscow Machinery Building Plant Avangard (MMZA) – which supplies S-400 air defense missile systems to the Russian army. The subterfuge let staff smuggle networking equipment from under the nose of its parent company, while Extreme earned nearly $500,000 in revenue from the sales.

Extreme did agree to pay nearly $1 million in fines to resolve the investigation.