Extreme Networks to Buy Brocade's Data Center Networking Business for $55 Million

**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting mergers in January.**

What a month it’s been for Extreme Networks.

The company said on Wednesday that it is buying Brocade’s data-center networking unit for $55 million. This comes less than three weeks after agreeing to buy Avaya’s networking business for $100 million. Avaya is going through chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Extreme says the Brocade purchase will lead to an expected $230 million in annual revenue. CEO Ed Meyercord says the data-center business is profitable and will increase Extreme’s margins.

“The addition of Brocade’s data-center networking business significantly strengthens our position in the expanding high-end data center market and reinforces our strategy of delivering software-driven networking solutions focused on enterprise customers,” Meyercord said. “As Extreme is the only pure-play end-to-end, wired and wireless enterprise IP networking company in the world, we believe Brocade’s data-center customers will benefit from our dedication to delivering high-quality, software-driven, secure networking solutions and the industry’s highest rated customer support.”{ad}

This comes a year after Brocade purchased Ruckus Wireless and months after Broadcom announced it would buy Brocade for about $6 billion. Broadcom now has chosen to divest Brocade’s data-center switching, analytics and routing business.

Meyercord says Extreme’s portfolio will benefit from the Brocade buy, as well as from Extreme’s purchase of Zebra’s WLAN business — and its Avaya bid.

Got all that? It’s quite the M&A whirlwind.

Extreme Networks said it will take over the data-center networking business two months after the still-pending Broadcom-Brocade acquisition closes. This could potentially lead to Extreme’s deal finalizing at the end of 2017.

Brocade CEO Lloyd Carney said Extreme will be “highly complementary” to the data center unit.

“Our two companies have similar strategic visions and believe that innovation will increasingly be driven through software capabilities that allow customers to successfully transform their networks for digital business,” He said. “Both companies are pure-play networking providers, serving the enterprise edge to the data-center core. And both companies consistently demonstrate a customer-first culture, placing a high value on excellence in customer and partner support.”