If you are still spending time trying to figure out complex licensing and network management, there’s a better way. Vendors have made us believe that networking has to be complex and challenging, but innovation has changed that and there is a better way even for the most challenging of environments.
So why are companies still paying a premium on licensing or requiring extra headcount to simply manage licenses?
Often, the challenges become most apparent at license renewal time, when everything must be re-evaluated and getting to the next stage of network evolution is like walking through a legal maze.
Fortunately, there are options for enterprises faced with the prospect of renewing a license that just doesn’t meet expectations and which may require more investment than originally planned to address business needs. By focusing on the three key benefits every networking solution should offer — simplicity, flexibility and ROI — choosing a supplier and a licensing option can be an easier process.
Move Beyond the Obvious
As existing hardware reaches its end-of-life cycle, the perceived benefits associated with working with a major, name-brand supplier have lost their luster. Complex, multi-level licensing structures that seemed necessary at the time of purchase are no longer worth the exorbitant fees, or gorilla tax, which must be paid to renew with the same supplier.
Working with the gorilla beyond a license expiration won’t deliver the expected ROI because a dedicated resource is needed just to parse and manage the hardware’s multi-level license. And complicated hardware feature and option bundling makes it difficult to purchase exactly what the enterprise needs without a rip and replace upgrade process and extra costs for features that may never be used.
Despite gorilla fatigue, some enterprises worry about moving to a different supplier. Typically, personnel are comfortable with the hardware itself and are concerned that moving to something new will require a minor adjustment.
Yet, many enterprises who have moved away from the gorilla have discovered that there are simpler, more flexible options available that can make a transition worthwhile at the business and operations level. And guess what, you don’t have to do it all at once. There is no need to rip and replace your entire network infrastructure – you can do it your way, at your pace in line with your budget.
When a major hotel chain was notified by their networking vendor that they would no longer support a series of switches, they felt stuck. They were told they’d need to upgrade the hardware and invest further in the software. It wasn’t in the budget, but they could not take the risk of running hardware that was no longer secure or maintained for performance.
That’s where Extreme came in. Extreme offered the customer the ability to manage and support the existing 3rd party switches and provided a migration path in line with the budgetary and timeline of the hotel chain. And they did it by offering a SINGLE license. They also get modern cloud network management with AI/ML features that help detect and immediately remediate any issues within the network.
Choose a New Path
Extreme helps customers create a unified network to manage and reduce risk, simplify operations and provide the ability to scale with the business as needed.
By choosing to transform your network with Extreme, you can eliminate the gorilla tax and improve operations with:
- One Network that connects everyone, everywhere securely through universal platforms — wired, wireless, SD-WAN with security and fabric. These function across a single topology from the branch to campus to the data center to the cloud.
- One Cloud that enables the unified management of everything, with AI — for both Extreme and non-Extreme, wired, wireless, SD-WAN, security, fabric and IoT. We offer cloud your way: public, private, hybrid and on-prem. You shouldn’t be forced into a vendor’s idea of cloud. We make it easy.
- One Extreme for certified global professional services, customer success, maintenance and support that can help mitigate outages, speed time to value and help you maximize the value of your network investment.
Eliminate the Gorilla Tax
By moving to Extreme, you get the simplest licensing approach in the industry with clear business predictability and no hidden costs:
- We provide one management license for your network. This cuts down on total cost of ownership and creates simplicity in what has often been a vendor-induced challenge.
- Our license is portable, so it can be moved between devices, including between Extreme wired and Extreme wireless products.
- The same license is used across both our ExtremeCloud IQ (cloud-based) or ExtremeCloud IQ — Site Engine (local) management options.
And with ExtremeCloud IQ-Site Engine, we make it easy to manage third-party networking and IoT devices, including those from Cisco, HPE, Juniper and many more. This enables centralized visibility and simple migration to an Extreme solution when you’re ready to make that transition.
Be Agile
Ultimately, our universal platform and licensing approach is structured to provide your enterprise with the agility to build the network it needs today and adapt quickly and easily as business needs change tomorrow. As Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research noted:
“With Universal Platforms, Extreme is the only vendor providing true agility. I didn’t even think agility was possible with hardware.”
Originally published on the Extreme Networks blog, May 26, 2023
