ExtremeCloud IQ - Easily Managed By A Sole - Multi-Cap Wearing - Individual
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We utilize ExtremeCloud IQ to enroll, manage and deploy our wireless access points district-wide. Being able to utilize a cloud-based management system removes the need for locally-managed controllers within each building, and also makes pushing out updated configuration changes a breeze! Checking out the hardware and configuration health of each individual AP is also incredibly simplistic, and takes no time at all.
Pros
- Rapidly deploying new access points with existing configurations
- Viewing device health for access point hardware as well as configuration compliance
- Spectrum-Analysis can be performed on each individual access point - which can show you what other SSIDs may be causing wireless conflicts in/near a building you manage
- Next-Day RMA replacement for dead/failed devices
- Online or phone support with GTAC team for any/all issues you may experience with their products
Cons
- Licensing as a whole is a nightmare. If you have a device RMA'd - you have to email their licensing team to have the device license transferred to your new hardware. Licensing renewals are also a pain, as oftentimes they don't have the licenses correctly tied to each device you own. Definitely the biggest issue I have with ExtremeCloud IQ Networks
- Hardware is tied to you once you purchase it, so there is no resale market/secondary market for the devices you purchase - should you try to sell them when they're end of life within your organization
Return on Investment
- The price-paid has been well worth it to our district, as I'm the lone employee who manages this entire system. Being able to stream-line device deployment with configurations that have been previously created is a huge time saver.
- The newest updates in software from ExtremeCloud IQ really helps neighbor settings that allow for channel and power setting changes to take place automatically. Once deployed, the access points pretty much take over and change these settings based on their environment. We really don't have any trouble tickets in regards to our wireless platform due to this automation.
- The only negative impact that comes to mind is in dealing with licensing renewals/purchases. Our last renewal (Summer of 2024) took a few weeks of back and forth with our reseller and ExtremeCloud IQ to ensure 100% that the licenses being renewed/deployed matched exactly with the hardware I intended to utilize. ExtremeCloud IQ tying licensing to hardware really sucked for existing customers - but I'm hoping it will be much easier now that we're through those growing pains.
