Last week, I attended Extreme Connect 2025, Extreme Networks’ annual customer event, which this year was held in Paris, near the Left Bank of the River Seine. Under the shadow of iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, the largest group of customers and partners learned about the latest products and strategy from the Extreme executives and staff over the course of three days and all were treated to a compelling keynote from Dr Rana el Kaliouby on Emotional AI.
Given the reality that modern network environments are inherently more complex, research highlights that 80% of organizations believe they are more complex than they were two years ago. The distributed nature, increased traffic, and multiple management tools drive this complexity. To enable organizations to overcome these challenges, Extreme Networks has introduced Platform ONE which delivers a simplified approach to comprehensive network management, AI-driven automation, and end-to-end visibility. Initially announced in December 2024 and now entering limited availability for all customers, Platform ONE represents a significant architectural shift that brings together management, security, analytics, and AI into a single, cloud-based experience.
After spending several years focused on integrating technology and delivering universal hardware, it was great to see Extreme turn its attention to delivering an innovative management platform.
Platform ONE: One Platform, Many Outcomes
According to Extreme, the project resulting in Platform ONE actually began over three years ago, prior to the launch of ChatGPT, with the understanding that AI needed to be at the core of this solution. It was designed to be a single pane of glass for enterprise network operations, converging visibility, control, AI, and automation across campus, data center, WAN, and edge environments. Core capabilities include:
- Unified control and visibility: From Wi-Fi to SD-WAN, wired to wireless, Extreme’s fabric to third-party endpoints—all are visible and manageable in one place. Note this visibility also extends to competitive networking products as well.
- Automated workflows: Extreme states that common network workflows have seen 90–95% time savings due to centralized automation and simplified navigation.
- Simplified licensing: The solution moves beyond conventional subscription models with a consumption-based approach that balances predictability and flexibility.
Perhaps the most compelling innovation within Platform ONE is the debut of Service Agent—Extreme’s first autonomous AI agent. This virtual assistant goes beyond basic automation that:
- Identifies and diagnoses problems in real time
- Attempts auto-remediation where possible
- Escalates with pre-collected diagnostic evidence when human intervention is needed
- Manages open cases and provides contextual updates
- Flags issues like end-of-life products or new CVEs impacting the environment
Critically, Extreme also enables guardrails to ensure autonomy doesn’t introduce risk. Service Agent inherits permissions from the user who initiates it, and administrators can define its scope and access down to the tool level. What this means is that there is always a human in the loop (HITL) to ensure the correct actions are being taken and help to accelerate the time to comfort and validation with the AI-powered agent recommendations.
There were a number of additional innovations launched including the ability to leverage Canvas AI to create and save customized dashboards, in mere minutes – eliminating the time to have a request cycle through product management and engineering.
The WiFi planning tool enabled organizations to upload a diagram of the physical location and then let the AI indicate where access points (APs) should be located if the environment were optimized for coverage or throughput. Network teams can also drag and drop access points (APs) to see how that would impact the environment.
The Map and the Magnifying Glass
One of the most elegant metaphors shared during the launch was the need for both a “map” of the enterprise network and a “magnifying glass” to zoom into individual issues. Platform ONE provides this layered visibility, letting operators move from a global overview to a specific device or service fault in seconds—without toggling between tools.
Security Built In
Security is natively integrated through its previously launched Universal ZTNA, enabling zero-trust access control across all network layers: fabric, Wi-Fi, remote users, and endpoints. This is not an afterthought—it’s orchestrated as part of the platform from the start, reinforcing the convergence of connectivity and security.
Real-World Validation via Early Access
This launch comes with active customers. An early access program saw 130 customers sign up to try Platform ONE. These early adopters have deployed the platform across thousands of devices, helping Extreme iterate in real time. And it should be noted that a number of E-Rate customers have voted with their wallets, signing up to purchase Platform ONE.
Don’t Forget the Fabric
While much of the hype centered on Platform ONE, one might assume that the Extreme’s Fabric wasn’t discussed. Not so, in fact in many of the customer conversations over the three days, many stated that was the key differentiator. Extreme’s Layer 2, Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) technology provides the agility and flexibility organizations need to rapidly reallocate networks, regardless of whether they are in the data center, campus, or edge, from a centralized management console. One customer highlighted how they were able to spin up networks on a daily basis to meet the ever-changing requirements of the event venue they support. Indeed, Extreme executives cited how the Fabric is a differentiator that has enabled them to win several accounts.
Extreme Universal Hardware Announcements
While Platform One was the star of the show, Extreme also highlighted new wireless, wired, and compute solutions designed to deliver scalable, AI-integrated, and secure networking across campus, data center, and edge environments. Those announcements include:
Extreme is broadening its Wi-Fi 7 lineup to support diverse indoor and outdoor environments:
- AP4020 (Indoor Wi-Fi 7): Shipping now, GA through September 2025.
- AP4060 (Outdoor Wi-Fi 7): Rugged design with external antenna support, GA in September 2025.
New additions to the wired switching portfolio cater to core, edge, and data center use cases:
- 7830 Switch: High-density 100G/400G modular switch for scalable campus cores – GA in Q3 2025.
- 5120 Switch: Cost-effective 10G switch optimized for IoT – GA in May 2025.
- 5320 Compact Switch: PoE-enabled, silent switch for constrained environments like ships and medical facilities – available now.
- 8730 Switch: 400G-ready switch for IP fabric spine/leaf architectures, built for AI and traditional workloads – GA in Q3 2025, with Platform ONE integration to follow.
Extreme refreshed its Universal Compute Platform (UCP) lineup to support localized services and orchestration with enhanced scalability. This will be more impactful as more organizations deploy inferencing at the edge:
- UCP 2130C: Medium-scale deployments.
- UCP 3150C: Large-scale, self-orchestrated deployments.
- UCP 3160C: Managed, cluster-based deployments for enterprise scale.
A Unified Cloud Experience
ExtremeCloud™ IQ is also receiving a major UI overhaul alongside deeper integration with Extreme Platform ONE, offering streamlined workflows, improved data visibility, and centralized management across hardware and applications
While this last announcement didn’t receive much attention, I believe it is a really important one. It can be challenging for organizations to transition to new management tools as they have to relearn the new interface. Following something I refer to as the “Principle of Least Astonishment,” Extreme will upgrade the ExtremeCloud IQ user interface to be very similar to Platform ONE, thus enabling organizations to migrate to Platform ONE much quickly and with a reduced learning curve.
Autonomy with Accountability
As enterprises embrace AI-driven platforms, the emphasis must remain on responsible deployment. Extreme’s approach to AI is both forward-thinking and pragmatic. Autonomy is a feature, but so are transparency, control, and human-in-the-loop design.
A panel with Intel, Microsoft, and Extreme executives focused on the future of AI in networking, emphasizing not only innovation but the importance of trust, governance, and experimentation.
The panelists collectively challenged the notion of “AI washing,” advocating instead for practical, scalable implementations rooted in quality data and task-based autonomy. They described Platform ONE as a unique, holistic platform that integrates AI agents with robust compliance, data control, and human-in-the-loop mechanisms.
Extreme outlined the company’s multi-year journey to develop a deterministic and scalable AI framework capable of supporting structured and unstructured data. This included custom tooling, multimodal interfaces, and newly patented methods for structured data access. This multi-year timeframe is important as it indicates the technology was not hastily pulled together to address a rising market tide, but rather a well thought out and executed platform approached centered on accountable AI.
Extreme is Outcome Focused
Extreme Networks has clearly listened to both customers and the market. Platform ONE is more than a new product—it’s a foundational shift aimed at redefining how enterprise networks are built, secured, and operated. By unifying capabilities, simplifying operations, and delivering AI-driven outcomes with built-in accountability, Extreme aims to set the bar for cloud-native, autonomous networking.
Couple that with its new lineup of universal hardware and their commitment to “Go to Extremes” to help customers achieve measurable outcomes, even in the most challenging environments, such as sports and event venues (NFL, MLB, F1, Premier League, etc.), hospitals, and large universities. To help organizations better understand the value of Platform ONE, Extreme has created a demo kit, called BOB (Business Opportunity Builder), to ship to customer sites. I had to take a picture with BOB.
The journey to AI adoption is built on experimentation, partnership, and continual learning. The biggest step customers must take is the first one. As Eduardo Kassner, Chief Data and AI Officer from Microsoft stated “There are no fast followers in AI. You’re either experimenting and adopting—or you’re being left behind.”
Extreme’s message to customers was clear: the future of networking is AI-powered, but it’s also customer-driven. The tools are here, the guardrails are in place, and now is the time to begin.
