Extreme Networks, IBM Extend OEM Relationship to Include SIEM

Extreme Networks has extended its OEM relationship with IBM to include Extreme Security Analytics’ security information and event management (SIEM) product, Extreme Security Analytics, and an intrusion prevention system (IPS) offering called Extreme IPS. Both offerings are based on security technologies from the Q1 Labs business unit of IBM.

The move follows an increase in high-profile IT security breaches that has IT organizations looking for advanced warning of potential threats, especially if they can be stopped at the network’s edge.

Eric Stinson, director of product management for Extreme Networks, said those IBM security technologies will be added to an Extreme Networks’ portfolio that already includes products from Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, AirWatch and MobileIron. The end goal is to make it easier for Extreme Networks’ partners to provide IT organizations with a complete set of network and security technologies.

OneFabric Connect

Extreme Networks’ open application programming interface (API), OneFabric Connect, an open application programming interface (API) is making it simpler to tie these products together. In fact, thanks to that API the entire network and security portfolio has essentially become programmable. Solution providers can choose to make use of the software-defined networking (SDN) software that Extreme Networks created to manage the environment or plug the control plane of their choice into the OneFabric API.

Naturally, solution providers can stitch the equivalent of all these technologies together on their own. In the case of Extreme Networks, however, solution providers are also benefiting from all the engineering work done by the provider of switches and routers to create an opportunity to sell higher-margin security technologies.

While networking and security have always been a natural fit for one another, the people inside IT organizations responsible for buying these technologies have often been using different budgets to fund the acquisition of these technologies. Now with security increasingly becoming part of everyone’s job in IT, more customers are looking for the provider of network services to also be able to secure those networks.

Network solution provider = security provider

In effect, that means that every provider of network solutions now needs to also be a provider of security solutions. The challenge facing solution providers today that don’t have that security expertise is to find the path of least resistance to acquiring as much of it as possible without necessarily having to engage every IT security vendor directly. For that reason the choice of networking vendor for the channel in the future may have as much to do with its security portfolio as it does the quality of the routers and switches it sells.