Extreme to Buy Brocade’s Data Center Network Business

By Pino Vallejo

Brought to you by Data Center Knowledge

Extreme Networks, a San Jose, California-based network technology vendor, has agreed to acquire Brocade’s data center networking business for $55 million after acquisition of the latter company by Broadcom closes.

This is the latest in a series of acquisition deals Extreme has entered into over the last six months as it fleshes out its enterprise networking portfolio to include everything from edge networking to core data center products. It acquired the wireless LAN business from Zebra Technology last October, and earlier this month announced that Avaya had agreed to make it the leading bidder for its networking business in an upcoming bankruptcy sale.

Brocade, also based in San Jose, sells switches, routers, and analytics software for data center networks. In recent years the company has placed a lot of focus on software-defined networks and building networking software that can run on commodity hardware.

Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney told Data Center Knowledge in an interview in 2015 that specialized data center network gear sold by the likes of Cisco and Juniper was on its way out, gradually ceding ground to commodity x86 hardware running networking software.

Singapore-based semiconductor maker Broadcom agreed to buy Brocade last November for $5.9 billion. The companies expect the acquisition of Brocade’s data center business to close sixty days after closing of the Brocade acquisition by Broadcom.

Extreme expects Brocade’s assets it’s buying to generate $230 million in annual revenue.