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, 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.

Can you assess the competitive landscape, including Cisco? We all operate in the shadow of a Cisco. It means you have to differentiate and be nimble. Cisco may be large, but they have lots of different product lines that may be incompatible with one another. We've built our company around a single system that's open. We have a very sophisticated XMLinterface and a set of APIs that make it very easy for a partner like Avaya to closely build in an application environment. That's key when you're a US$400million company like us. The trick is to apply what you are really good at into markets where you can make a difference, and get there before Cisco.