Extreme Networks this week announced two developments that allow it to address data center opportunities for converged switching/compute/storage architectures.
The first is an exclusive arrangement with server company Lenovo to resell Extreme switches. The second is validation and certification of Extreme switches to participate in EMC VSPEX integrated reference architectures.
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VSPEX is designed to provide a validated and modular reference design for users so they can choose which hypervisors, servers, networking equipment and EMC storage components to include in their data center and cloud infrastructure.
The alliance and endorsements allow Extreme to address a converged infrastructure market that the company, citing data from Wikibon, says is expected to grow from $6 billion this year to $74 billion in 2017 -- a compounded annual rate of better than 87%. Gartner says the integrated reference architecture market alone was $765 million in 2011 and is growing at 55% annually.
Lenovo and its channel partners will address converged infrastructure requirements in more than 60 countries, Extreme says. Extreme switches will be bundled with Lenovo ThinkServers, and perhaps with EMC storage components -- EMC and Lenovo struck up an alliance a year ago.
Other switch vendors validated for EMC VSPEX include Cisco and Brocade. Juniper's QFabric switches have been certified as interoperable with EMC's VMAX and VNX storage products.
Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 25 years, 21 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.
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