Networking company Extreme Networks Inc. aims to help enterprises along their “digital transformation” journey. Today, the company is pitching a new set of hardware and software offerings designed to manage multiple cloud environments better.

The company has just announced its new Agile Data Center, combining its SLX switching and routing hardware with management, analytics and security software. The platform is designed to eliminate the risk and reduce the complexity of running multiple cloud deployments, it said.

Extreme Networks is a rival to more established networking players such as Cisco Systems Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc. It made a name for itself designing, building and installing traditional Ethernet-based networks, but in recent years has set its sights on creating a modernized infrastructure that’s more suited to managing workloads that run in multiple public and private clouds.

To that end Extreme Networks made a couple of significant acquisitions last year – buying up Avaya Inc.’s networking assets in March 2017, followed by Brocade Communications Systems Inc.’s data center switching, routing and analytics business just a few weeks later.

Extreme Networks has since kept itself busy integrating those assets with its own technologies, and the new Agile Data Center is the result of those efforts.

The software is made up of several components designed to automate the setup of modern networks, manage them, create new workflows and analyze network data. These include the Extreme Workflow Composer, which is used to automate information technology workloads across multiple domains and platforms. Meanwhile, the Extreme Embedded Fabric Automation software enables companies to create a data center fabric of any size.

With Extreme Management Center, users can monitor multivendor networks, while Extreme Analytics provides visibility into applications and their telemetry data by way of a “virtual sensor” that taps into them without slowing down the network.

The Agile Data Center also integrates with VMware Inc.’s vCenter platform, allowing for more rapid application deployment, the company said. The new hardware includes Extreme’s family of SLX 9030 network switches, plus the new SLX 9640 routers.

“Interoperability means more than just a myriad of APIs,” said Extreme Networks Senior Vice President of Products Nabil Bukhari. “It means delivering real, multivendor capabilities that meet the needs of the modern enterprise – the types our competitors don’t like to talk about. With our new Agile Data Center Solution, we are walking the talk.”

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