Extreme Networks hands resellers the solution to go after retailers

Retail is often cited as the ideal vertical to make an edge networking pitch towards due to its distributed environment and Extreme Networks is moving to make it easier for partners to serve up solutions for those customers.

The vendor has rolled out its Extreme Retail Select packages that provide customers in that vertical with the chance to get network connectivity set-up without the headaches often associated with designing and deploying those services.

The vendor is making six configurations - covering a range of possible customer environments - available via its channel partners now with the turn-key solutions ideally appealing to those users that are looking for help dealing with the challenges of dealing with connectivity issues.

The solutions include a dedicated retail cloud environment and pre-selected hardware and services elements. The offering covers wired, wireless and SD-WAN environments and is based on the ExtremeCloud IQ architecture.

Resellers will also be able to provide retail customers with analytics and insights into the performance of stores and the way customers are interacting with the network. The solution is also PCI compliant to ensure it meets the requirements that impact the retail market.

“Every retailer understands the need to digitally transform to advance– but they don’t always know where to start. Extreme Retail Select packages meet retailers wherever they are on their transformation journey – whether that’s just starting to provide guest Wi-Fi and wireless POS, or if it’s implementing computer vision and smart shelves," said Mike Leibovitz, senior director of product management, Extreme Networks.

"We’re giving customers a flexible, cloud-driven platform that meets their fundamental IT needs, simplifies purchase and deployment, and enables next-generation customer experiences,” he added.

One of the partners that shared their views about the offering indicated that many retailers were looking at ways to improve customer experience and counter the challenge of some of the online etailers.

“In a fiercely competitive retail environment that’s been completely reshaped by Amazon, it can be challenging to grow mindshare and sales. Extreme’s Retail Select packages provide all of the ingredients we need in order to compete in retail, from cloud-managed Wi-Fi access points, PoE switches and SD-WAN routers, to analytics dashboards, to security capabilities," said David Raftery, chief customer officer at Integration Partners.

Extreme has been adding some depth to its cloud and edge network capabilities ever since it sealed the acquisition of Aerohive last summer.

Aerohive was one of the first suppliers to offer controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud network management and launch Wi-Fi 6 access points, which are one of the main features of the Extreme Retail Select solution.