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Extreme Networks ups networking AI ante with Platform One
Leading cloud networking provider announces limited availability of next-gen networking platform attributed with reducing manual tasks by up to 90%
Aiming to address the needs of a world in which the vast majority of business leaders see networks as more complicated than just two years ago, Extreme Networks has launched new capabilities in its Platform One offer, becoming, it claims, the first provider of its kind to integrate conversational, multimodal and agentic artificial intelligence (AI) into one enterprise networking platform.
First announced in December 2024, Platform One is now in limited availability globally, and at its Extreme Connect 2025 conference in Paris, the company revealed the platform is now in use, with over 130 companies around the world developing use cases showing how companies can unlock new levels of visibility, control and efficiency across networks, streamlining operations and delivering insights that allow teams to act faster.
At day one of the conference, Extreme chief product and technology officer and general manager of subscription business Nabil Bukhari said that development of the product had been centred around feedback from enterprises that had said of the need to improve basic capability to be more relevant for business. He said his company had heard that AI was limited and fractured; there were too many disjointed applications; there was a lack of real-time visibility; and licensing was too complicated.
Moreover, Extreme notes that research had found 89% of C-level executives were demanding a single platform for AI, networking and security, and 79% of the same senior management wanted a return on their investment in AI two quarters after initial investment.
But Bukhari said the question businesses were asking was where the business outcomes were, and, worryingly, that there was a lot of “AI washing” around. The answer was not to build a product just for the sake of building a product, because if the customers are not looking for a new business outcome, they’re probably not going to buy a new product either.
“Anybody that stands up and says, ‘we are making networks easier for you’, they are absolutely lying, because networking is complicated,” he said. “But what we need to do is make your experience of buying them and operating them easier. Networks are getting bigger after the pandemic. They are not only just in campuses or in buildings; they’re reaching out into the homes of your employees, of your suppliers, of the people that buy from you. They’re on mobile phones. They go wherever you go. Networks are no longer datacentre or campus or branches. Networks are to connect applications, people, devices and data, no matter where it is. Then what do you need? You need a view to look at it, because if you can’t see it, you can’t operate it.
“But that’s not good enough either, because what happens when there’s something that goes wrong in that complex network? Then you need to be able to go deep into the network and see that specific problem. You need a map of your network that shows everything, and you need a magnifying glass that shows you exactly what is happening in there. There are no applications out there that do both of those simultaneously and very easily, and without the additional cost of multiple applications. This is what we were hearing from our customers.”
Solving problems
For Bukhari, the issue facing Extreme was either to solve problems with the existing applications or try to change the game. That is to build something that was not trying to fix problems, but instead, he insisted on creating the services network professionals could use for the next 10 years.
Announcing Platform One’s capability in Paris, Extreme attributed the offering with fundamentally being able to break down silos between networking and security, automating tasks through AI agents, reducing mundane networking tasks from hours to minutes and minutes to seconds. It said the platform offered a reduction in manual tasks at every interaction, and conversational, multimodal and agentic AI gives users single-place access to trusted knowledge such as product documentation, global technical access centre (GTAC) articles, common vulnerabilities and exposures and training content. In all, it is said to deliver up to a 90% reduction in manual tasks with AI at every interaction.
With its AI Canvas, Platform One users are said to be able to reduce the heavy lift of manual reporting and generate real-time interactive dashboards, shareable insights and visual reports in minutes. Extreme’s Service AI Agent is also claimed to cut resolution times by up to 98% through automated diagnostics, delivering a faster, smarter support experience, with a human in the loop.
The service AI Agent gathers logs, analyses telemetry and autonomously troubleshoots issues across wireless and fabric, and if users choose, can auto remediate issues. When escalation is needed. It can auto-generate cases and hand them off to GTAC with no forms or waiting.
In terms of security, Platform One uses Extreme Universal zero-trust network access (ZTNA) technology to deliver AI-assisted policy recommendations designed to simplify access security through a single identity-based engine. It unifies policy across users, devices, locations, networks and applications to cut complexity, conflicts and errors. An advisory AI agent validates access requests, suggests optimal group and policy use, plans consistent enforcement and offers real-time setup guidance. Fundamentally, such automation is said to ease a SecOps workload and reduce risk through consistent, streamlined security.
Platform One’s workspace is said to be able to improve productivity, cut unnecessary steps and deliver what Extreme says will be real-time, “hyper-personalised” experiences for every role, from network operators and procurement teams to executives. Productivity improvements are said to be derived by eliminating the need to work across multiple applications with cross-team AI-assisted workflows enabling better collaboration between cross-functional teams in one unified, “intuitive” experience.
New visualisation capabilities now possible are intended to eliminate network blind spots through visibility across physical, access, fabric and service layers, via a single login. The result is said to be deeper, broader visibility than any other management service or application. Views include geo maps, topology and fabric overlays to give customers sight of global environments or individual policies, devices and subscriptions. Integrated orchestration and workflows have been built to eliminate the need for multiple tools and streamlines planning, design, troubleshooting and root cause analysis to minimise downtime.
A single, powerful platform
Assessing what the new Platform One could deliver to businesses, Jim Frey, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, suggested that Extreme was driving innovation by unifying its portfolio into what he called “a single, powerful platform” layered with AI and wrapped in a simple, intuitive user interface – and that with the new platform, the company was making what he regarded as “substantial headway” on delivering the promise of AI for networking.
“For enterprises, this means more visibility, automation and control across the network, enabling faster decision-making, reduced complexity, and a foundation that scales with the demands of their business,” he said. “First and foremost [Extreme Platform One] will eliminate the gaps and seams that have historically existed for those deploying and managing Extreme-based networks, achieving functional equivalency while adding a powerful layer of AI-assisted workflows and features.
“It also puts the company’s customers in a position to take full advantage of Extreme’s unique fabric architecture and capabilities for simplifying network design and operations,” said Frey. “I look forward to future advancements that will bring endpoint data, richer security analytics and more application awareness into the mix, to further expand the reach and impact of the solution. Extreme Platform One will not solve all networking challenges for everyone out there, but it does provide good reason for taking a closer look at Extreme Networks for anyone planning a network refresh or new buildouts.”
In Paris, Extreme highlighted the work of early customers in the varied form of West Suffolk NHS hospitals, energy company Eon and Dubai World Trade Centre. Outlining how his health authority has been using the new Platform One as well as the Extreme Fabric offering, Andrew Smith, senior systems engineer at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, stressed that like all businesses, and especially those in healthcare, the organisation was also looking to do more with less, and fundamentally empower his team to get things done better and quicker. Indeed, the AI capabilities, he said, “just makes the magic happen” at the hospitals.
“We manage two hospitals and multiple community sites, so we need a proactive way of seeing what’s going on across every location,” said Smith. “In Extreme Platform One, being able to visualise every layer of the network, including fabric, completely changes our day-to-day. We can instantly see how everything’s connected, pinpoint issues before they escalate, and understand the full context behind what’s happening. As our organisation grows, Extreme Platform One will grow with us, and make it easier for us to scale services and deliver outstanding patient care.”
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Smith said there were four key benefits and takeaways to the deployment. “First, you have ALS,” he said. “You’ve got the assets, you’ve got visibility of what’s going on in your network, what the status is, and also things like what stage of their life they’re at.
“If you know it’s the end of support, if you need to replace [an asset], we’ve got the alert so to let our teams know what’s going on so we can be more proactive, not reactive,” said Smith. “[Then there] is licensing the new platform. Platform One makes it much easier, so you can just zoom in. If you take, for example, my finance teams, they’re always asking, ‘what do we have to buy and why?’ So, you can give them a visual, and you can export it and show them what they need to look at to make the magic happen.
“[Third is] is if I go to the board, I need some evidence. It has to be in simple layman’s language for the board members. They just want to know the ‘Three Ws’: why, what and where.
“And fourth is the security aspect,” he said. “It is always at the back of our minds. If you’ve got your due diligence and you secure by design, Platform One can help you do that, because you can visualise it.”
While Extreme Platform One is now in limited availability, general availability is planned for the third quarter of 2025.
