* Extreme offers services for managing devices
Extreme Networks this week introduced a management-services program for its customers.
Services have long been touted as a potentially huge growth area for technology companies. For example, tech giant IBM got into services a long time ago, and today services represent half of IBM’s business, bringing in tens of billions of dollars a year.
It’s also generally agreed that services are going to play a significant role in the future of Microsoft. As the company turned 30 analysts said Microsoft may need to turn to services to keep up its growth, which won’t likely be coming from software.
Extreme obviously isn’t the same size as these other companies, but the principle remains the same. Not only do services represent a revenue opportunity for the vendor, but they also – if done well – can help to endear customers to the vendor for the long term.
Extreme’s Premier Services Program aims to bring users hosted management tools to give them visibility into devices on their networks. Extreme promises the services will offer in-depth information on application and infrastructure availability and performance.
Customers can choose services for network monitoring, network cost/system optimization, traffic and application analysis, security optimization, convergence planning and management, and network documentation.
Extreme says the services can be deployed in a matter of hours and can scale to thousands of devices. The services are available now, and a “virtual tour” is available at Extreme’s Web site.
