The adoption of virtualization and outsourcing of infrastructure to managed hosting and cloud providers is driving demand for high performance and increased scale in the data center network. Extreme Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXTR) has responded with next-generation data center products to enable the migration to virtualized data centers and new infrastructure solutions that feature market-leading scalability, performance and simplicity.

Hosting companies and enterprises alike are scaling their data centers to realize the benefits of a virtualized infrastructure and cloud-based applications and systems. This new architecture enables resources to be dynamically managed and deployed and therefore delivers great organizational flexibility, agility and scale.

The physical network -- providing essential interconnect and backbone within and between Data Centers globally -- is the foundation for the new virtualized architecture and topologies. It is therefore essential that the network technology and systems be highly scalable, deliver powerful performance, capacity and capabilities to support large data center implementations. Whether these deployments are based upon Layer 2 or Layer 3 designs, the network must support a rapidly expanding number of virtual machines and a very large numbers of users within a limited power and physical footprint.

"As managed hosting and cloud environments continue to grow rapidly, both Layer 2 and Layer 3 scalability becomes a major issue in the network," said Jon Oltsik, principal network analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

Extreme Networks today introduced new core and edge data center switching solutions that boost the physical network to deliver the scale and flexibility for a broad range of deployments. The BlackDiamond® 8900-xl modules and Summit® X480 stackable switches offer industry-leading data center solutions that allow for a variety of network architectures and topologies to be deployed by managed hosting companies and enterprises.

"With this announcement, Extreme Networks introduces both Layer 2 and Layer 3 scale across its data center product family of switches, and this is essential to scaling the network to enable these kinds of environments," continued Jon Oltsik.

"Extreme Networks has answered the call as we expand our business, consolidate our data center and migrate to 10 Gigabit Ethernet core," said Hugh Wilkins, senior manager of Information Technology for Inmar, a leading national provider of retail logistics services in the United States. "Extreme Networks met our foremost priorities for our data center with its Summit and BlackDiamond solution families, and our network has the intelligence, flexibility and performance to manage multiple terabytes of data across our virtualized server environment."

Pricing and Availability

The BlackDiamond -xl modules for the BlackDiamond 8800 have a List price starting at U.S. $15,995. The Summit X480 switch has a list price starting at U.S. $11,995 for fiber and U.S. $9,995 for copper (Base-T). Both products will be available for shipment this quarter.

To learn more about Extreme Networks high performance data center solutions, visit:

http://www.extremenetworks.com/solutions/datacenter.aspx