Ed Maycord (Extreme Networks)
Credit: Extreme Networks
Despite problems sourcing parts and a massive backlog of orders, Extreme Networks hit a record high in the first quarter of fiscal year 23 with nearly $300 million, up 11 percent year over year, and seven percent quarter over quarter.
The CEO backlog Ed Meyercord referred to during the seller’s quarterly earnings call this week is $550 million, also a record.
To put it in perspective, that’s roughly three Full of Quarters From Producer he won in Backlog, mostly due to problems in the supply chain. Concerns about the economy are also in the mix, but Maycord said that when it comes to investing in networks, things are looking bright.
“The combination of our continued revenue growth and record accumulation gives us greater confidence in our long-term growth outlook,” he said. His optimism stems from what he said is a belief among organizations that networks are a strategic asset and that Extreme strives to facilitate the deployment and management of such networks.
“We do not see communication initiatives as unprioritized,” he said. “If enterprise customers have to cut back on spending, we don’t see them lose the priority of networks.”
Wireless is powerful
One area that has seen significant revenue growth but also “significant” backlog is wireless networking, where Extreme is pushing Wi-Fi 6E hard technology.
“If you think you know how we live and how we work and how we shop and you think about the environments and the amount of the wireless versus wired environment, you know it’s growing, and I think there’s a shorter wireless life cycle than traditional wired switches as well,” Maycord said.
“As a result, there are more upgrades, and I think there’s more volume and circulation in the wireless space.”
This includes cellular wireless technology, including 5G for environments where Wi-Fi is not the best option. “[A]You look at things like smart cities, longer range, lower latency, private cellular networks, support for driverless cars — those kinds of things — not a traditional Wi-Fi solution, Maiercord said. “So I guess you’ll see the emergence of some of these other technologies…”
Gartner this month No single wireless technology will dominate, he said, but companies will use a variety to support a range of environments, from WIFI In the office, services for mobile devices, low power protocols, and even wireless connectivity.
So much so that Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60 percent of companies will be using five or more wireless technologies simultaneously.
“We will see a range of solutions in the enterprise that include 4G, 5G network, LTE, WiFi 5, 6, 7 all of which will create new data organizations that can be used for analytics, and low-power systems will harvest power directly from the grid. This means that the network will become a source of direct commercial value.
machine learning
Meyercord said Extreme is looking to continue expanding and evolving automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning features with cloud-based wired and wireless network management offerings under the ExtremeCloud IQ umbrella, including ExtremeCloud IQ CoPilot.
The idea is that through artificial intelligence or machine learning technology, a company can automatically identify and fix network problems that customers might not have seen before or were not aware of, Maycord said.
The latest developments, CoPilot is highly developed To include support for digital twins, virtual replicas of physical devices that organizations can run tests on before making changes to real devices. For example, testing on virtual twins can validate and configure new network switches and access points before going live with the real thing, the company said.
Xtreme is not alone with supply chain problems
The supply constraints mentioned by Maycord are widespread. Fierce rival Juniper Networks said this week that its order backlog is $2.3 billion, down $100 million from the previous quarter. It is likely that others like Cisco and Arista will be reporting the same kind of backlog of stories in the next few weeks as lead times for some routers, switches and other equipment have already been delayed beyond six months.
Supply chain problems caused most of them Major network players to redesign or re-engineer certain products Trying to overcome the shortage of ingredients and deliver the products to the customers.
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