Meyercord said Extreme has been able to qualify alternative components that were designed for other industrial sectors, which has given it another source of supply and the company has been able to redesign its products to reduce the number of chips required, which is another factor, he told analysts.
“So it’s through a combination of a variety of initiatives that we’ve been able to solve for this, and we’re confident in saying that we have no near-term, nor do we believe a long-term, issue with memory and currently any of our components going forward,” Meyercord said.
Meyercord also credited Extreme’s core relationship with Broadcom as a key reason for its chipset and memory success. “Broadcom is a strategic partner to Extreme, and they go out of their way to support us and help us in these situations,” Meyercord said.
The supply and cost of memory components is causing industry anxiety in general, with Arista CEO Jayshree Ullal proclaiming that memory prices are “horrendous, an order of magnitude, exponentially higher,” in the company’s 4Q financial call in February. “So, clearly, with the situation worsening and also expected to last multiple years, we are experiencing shortages in memory…we are planning for this,” Ullal said.
“Memory is typically a sort of boom-and-bust component industry, and right now, it’s booming for the memory guys, and I don’t think they’re in a huge rush to try to solve the issue, even if they could,” Tom Mainelli, group vice president of device and consumer research at IDC said in a recent Network World article. And even if they wanted to, Mainelli said it would take 12 to 18 months, if not longer, to increase capacity.
Another high-impact technology moving Extreme forward is Wi-Fi 7. During its financial call, Extreme reports Wi-Fi 7 represented 37% of total wireless unit shipments in the quarter, up from 27% last quarter. In terms of bookings dollars, nearly half of wireless bookings came from Wi-Fi 7, the vendor reported.
