Extreme Networks is recruiting large partners to its new management platform as HPE integrates Juniper Networks and Cisco pushes multi-tech sales, Extreme CEO Ed Meyercord told Channel Dive on Thursday.
Extreme Networks recruited a telecommunications company in the last quarter as it moved upmarket with enterprises and telcos. The new partner, which Extreme did not name, will be the vendor’s largest managed service provider, Meyercord said. The company also scored a deal with German MSP Regio IT and Austrian telco A1Telekom Austria in the quarter ended Sept. 30, according to Extreme’s Q3 2026 earnings report.
Meyercord fired shots rival vendors Cisco and HPE in an interview with Channel Dive, saying his company is offering a unified platform and a simplified portfolio to partners that are feeling confused and overwhelmed by the competitors.
“We have a pure platform,” Meyercord said. “From an agentic AI perspective, all the data is in the same place.”
Meyercord called out Cisco’s partner strategy during Extreme’s earnings call last week, claiming the vendor’s platform play is disenfranchising small partners. Cisco’s financial incentives for partners that sell its entire portfolio, including cybersecurity and collaboration, create opportunities for Extreme, Meyercord said.
“It's harder for the smaller players to do it because they have to invest in personnel," he said. “You can't just tell the networking people to start selling security, because that's not what they know how to sell.”
Many partners prefer to sell networking and cybersecurity products from separate vendors, Meyercord said.
“We have network access and application access controls built into our platform, but obviously there's this whole body of security that's out there, and our channel partners would rather position Extreme and Palo Alto Networks than Cisco,” Meyercord said.
IT purchasers don’t necessarily buy network and cyber at the same time.
“When you're upgrading your network, you're not making that cybersecurity decision,” he said.
Cisco told Channel Dive that its partner program rewards the value a partner provides rather than how much of the portfolio it sells.
“Partners who go deep in a specific technology or vertical can earn recognition for that expertise, and they can team up with other partners to co-deliver solutions rather than build every capability in-house,” the company said in an email.
Meyercord also called out HPE, which is integrating Juniper Networks’ platform after acquiring the company last summer. At the end of last year, HPE transferred capabilities from Juniper’s popular Mist management platform into the HPE Aruba Central management platform, and swapped capabilities from Aruba Central into Mist. Meyercord said partners are confused about which aspects are going into which platform.
“It's kind of a question of timing,” he said. “People that are trying to make this big network investment today, there's a lot of uncertainty around what's going to come out of HPE and Juniper, because you just don't know what is the surviving technology, what is the surviving platform.”
HPE responded to Meyercord’s comments in an email statement to Channel Dive.
“HPE is committed to giving customers and partners confidence, choice and a clear path forward across its networking portfolio by continuing to invest in both industry-leading AI-powered platforms, HPE Aruba Central and HPE Mist, while bringing key capabilities across each to enhance the customer experience,” HPE said. “Built on a common microservices architecture, both platforms provide a foundation for accelerating innovation and delivering powerful new insights, management and automation capabilities, ensuring customers can move forward with HPE with confidence.”
Devan Adams, principal analyst at Channel Dive sister company Omdia, said Extreme is targeting specialists in IT networking rather than generalist partners.
“Extreme's ideal partner recruits would be the networking purist, with little to no interest in hiring new non-networking staff or other standalone business units for security or other services,” Adams told Channel Dive in a message. “Cisco and HPE have more diverse portfolios which they incentive partners on delivering their full suite, whereas Extreme can principally focus on going deeper with IT networking specialists that don’t want to stretch into unfamiliar service areas.”
In the meantime, Extreme is pushing adoption of its Platform One, announced last summer. Meyercord said 10% of Extreme customers had adopted the platform by the end of 2025. He expects adoption to reach 50% at the end of this year and 80% by the end of next year.
The company will adopt a token model for AI use inside the platform, according to an earnings report. Meyercord added the company is following where IT budgets are moving, consequently widening the market for its partners.
“We were contemplating seat licenses and tokens, and this thing has evolved,” Meyercord said. “Now the whole industry is going to tokens. Our tokens are agent actions. We're deep in the throes of this.”
He promised that partners will have a way to make money off agent actions.
“As we're developing our business models, the channel is getting paid, and as we design our agent actions and tokens, the channel is going to get paid,” he said. “Let's just put it that way. It's still early innings.”
