Extreme Networks Inc, the gigabit ethernet and wire speed routing start up plans to float on the Nasdaq exchange within the next six to nine months, the company has revealed. The Cupertino, California firm which was founded in May 1996, and shipped its products a year later (CI No 3,140), now claims to have a 54% market share in the gigabit ethernet product shipments, competing with main rival Cisco Systems Inc. Extreme vice president of marketing George Prodan says that although the company is looking to get a listing on Nasdaq, its largest market share comes from the Asia Pacific region, which accounts for 40% of its business, with the US and Europe accounting for 30% each. Prodan believes this market has taken the lead because countries like Japan in particular are more prepared to take a risk when it comes to new technology. Extreme employs 85 people in offices around the world, and has grown substantially since five people set it up nearly three years ago. Extreme operates its fiscal year June to June and anticipates it will achieve $30m in revenues this fiscal year. Prodan said the company is still a start up and is using venture capital investment, but will cross the line into profitability in the next three to five months. Extreme has 120 customers at the present time and 30 resellers worldwide. It plans to increase the number of resellers to 50 by June and to 100 six months after that. Extreme has also signed two major OEM agreements, but Prodan says he cannot reveal the company’s names because of contract laws. But he has revealed that one is a large systems vendor, the other a major networking company. Although Extreme has established itself quite prominently within the gigabit ethernet space, Prodan says he wishes the company had made a bit more noise about its wirespeed level-3 based local area network products. The company announced its latest product offering at the NetEvents conference in Switzerland last week, taking the wraps off of the Summit 4, an integrated server switching offering. The main intention behind the product is to migrate forward to an internet switching architecture for mainframes.
