The 'experience economy' is a term which has its roots in Alvin Toffler's classic book Future Shock, published in 1971. In the book, Toffler defines the term 'future shock' as a certain psychological state of individuals - even entire societies - when faced with too much change in too short a period of time. Toffler explains that future economic growth depends upon - and is even defined by - the quality of experience (QoE) of the user.
This is relevant in today's world of rapid change and technological advancement where one of the biggest challenges of QoE is associated with the evolving mobile environment characterised by users' demands for connectivity when they want it and how they want it.
QoE is an acronym that resonates at Extreme Networks whose non-disruptive wireless LAN scalability and density management technologies are emerging as important building blocks in the foundation of the new, global experience economy.
Extreme Networks addresses the experience economy by providing simple, fast and smart networks targeted at businesses, sports and entertainment venues, schools, hospitals, government departments, manufacturers and more.
For example, Extreme's high performance wired and wireless hardware, combined with its software-defined architecture, makes it simple, fast and smart for users to connect to a network with a device of their choice.
Extreme's vision of the experience economy is defined by the ease with which its unified wired/wireless network management solutions facilitate user on-boarding and accommodate network-wide, role-based policies and other benefits.
Speed is a key element of this vision. It is assured by Extreme's full range of high-performance switches, headlined by its 100G BlackDiamond X8 designed for the cloud-scale requirements of modern data centres, high-performance computing (HPC), and Internet exchange points (IXPs).
From a technical perspective, the BlackDiamond X8 provides a low-latency, high-performance switch fabric with high-density wire-speed 10GbE, 40GbE, and 100GbE connectivity for edge-to-core applications, all within the confines of a compact footprint.
This "fabric-in-a-box" solution eliminates expensive multi-tier architectures while meeting the challenges of inter-device connectivity, uplink bandwidth demands and low latency. It also leverages a low-power design ideal for "green" operations with requirements for high degrees of energy efficiency, resulting in lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
In addition to a full range of 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi products, Extreme also offers network-powered application analytics via Purview, the industry's first solution designed to transform the network into a strategic business asset.
In essence, Purview is a network optimisation solution capable of mining network-based business events and strategic information and then aggregating, analysing, correlating and reporting on the data. It is able to help business leaders make faster and more effective decisions, improving business performance in line with many of the tenants of the experience economy.
Moreover, Purview provides value to other lines of business while enabling ongoing business innovation powered by the network infrastructure.
Purview operates against the backdrop of the current explosion of mobile, social, data, cloud and specialised applications (apps) that use data analytics to create new digital strategies which are key to the success of rapidly evolving online businesses.
The demand for digital analytics will continue to grow, according to the IDC research group which points to the technology becoming a top priority for CIOs in the near future.
QoE is essential for people living in today's experience economy. For example, when network users connect to a video, they require the network delivering it should not only be smart enough to remember who they are, but capable of providing a blisteringly fast connection so that there is no interruption to the video stream.
Extreme Networks supports these and other QoE objectives through solutions such as its software defined architecture which provides visibility and awareness of all devices and applications connected to the network. These benefits are complemented by features such as real-time WiFi reporting, forensics and advances in 'location/migration/mitigation' techniques.
Today, Extreme Networks is able to build networks that deliver on the promises and expectations of the experience economy. It does so through the provision of a comprehensive portfolio, including campus mobility and data centre solutions with the ability to deliver quick provisioning and orchestration of the network environment for new services - thus giving a positive and consistent QoE to every user in the environment.
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