Westcon appointed as Extreme Networks distributor

Extreme Networks, the world`s leading supplier of high Bandwidth Layer 3 solutions, has appointed Westcon as an African distribution partner for its entire range of switching products.

Westcon, is a channel provider of leading-edge networking technology products, and is a division of the global Westcon Group. Through their subsidiaries and affiliates they operate in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia. Westcon remain customer-focused and are a recognized industry leader in value-added service, support and training. By working together with resellers, and understanding the evolving needs of the market, are able to provide a comprehensive array of value added network technologies.

Schalk van Tonder, channel manager for Extreme Networks at Westcon SA, says: "The Extreme Networks products, which are aimed at the bandwidth starved service provider market, fit in well with our strategy as a value-add distributor. Westcon, believes that as new SP`s emerge in South Africa, new opportunities will be created for the Extreme Networks products in both these and enterprise markets, particularly as large consortiums start to roll-out metropolitan area network (MAN) infrastructure and services to support home and mobile workers." van Tonder points out that the Extreme Networks range complements other agencies in Westcon`s portfolio. Says Bart Tillmans, marketing director for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at Extreme Networks: "As South Africa`s largest focused networking distribution group, Westcon has the skills and infrastructure needed to sell and support the Extreme product range.

"This relationship will put Extreme Networks in a strong position to supply bandwidth-hungry South African enterprises and service providers with solutions that offer higher performance than traditional WAN`s, as demand for new e-business and telecommuting applications starts to ramp up." Tillmans adds "Westcon and Extreme share the vision of building networking systems based on Gigabit Ethernet and the Internet Protocol (IP) that serve as the infrastructure facilitating the Internet economy. Extreme Networks products are built on a common architecture that gives customers a simplified, high-performance networking infrastructure that is easy to manage and maintain. By combining Gigabit Ethernet and IP with wire-speed Layer 3 Switching and Policy-Based Quality of Service, Extreme Networks offers users a solution that increases the flow of information and accommodates future network growth."

The Extreme Networks product range consists of three main product lines: the Summit, Alpine and BlackDiamond switching solutions. These products are all built on Extreme`s Summit Chipset, an ASIC-based architecture, and based on ExtremeWare, the system software. All Extreme systems can be centrally managed using Extreme Enterprise Manager, a Windows NT or Unix-based network management tool. This eases administration and lowers the total cost of ownership of the networking environment.