What is the company's strategy for gaining mid-size companies as customers? Mid-market customers are beginning to suffer from the same issues as bigger customers. Unfortunately, they don't have the resources to deal with these issues. They don't have large IT staffs. A company of 50 to 500 people may still want to go to voice-over-IP because it is more cost effective but requires a sophisticated network infrastructure. And yet, you don't have the people to do it. So, we can come in with an assessment, with professional services, to tell you what you need.
What is Extreme's technology direction? Our technology direction is pretty simple. You have got to understand the network very well. That means being able to get at the heart of those IP packets and understand the flow that's coming to them. That requires pretty sophisticated hardware and software, which the company is built upon. Then it requires building products able to exploit that, and knowing what markets are receptive to those features.
Am I correct in concluding that Extreme won't be making any major strategic changes soon? At a strategic level, yeah, I don't think a lot will change. The next year or so for the company is all about operation and focus and making sure people are in the right segment, and making sure all the technology in the products is transferred into the knowledge base of the sales force. It's all about partner organizations, solutions and all of that.
Was there a feeling that Extreme needed a CEO with engineering and technology prowess to replace co-founder Gordon Stitt, who was known for his marketing expertise? I think Gordon did a fabulous job pointing the company in the right direction, building capability into the technology to do many things. The company simply got to the size where [it] needed a manager that knew how to build the right processes, segment the market, build value chains, focus the organization on execution and this was just the right point to make that skill set. [It was time for] someone who kind of got trained as a general manager as opposed to someone who started a company and had to learn as he went along.
Are you planning any executive changes at the company? That's hard to say after 30 days. There may be some shuffling around at some point. Right now, the team seems pretty good. We'll move some things around the chess board to fine tune the team, but we're just talking about fine tuning.