With just over two months until the Extreme Connect 2025 conference in Paris, we invited Lassi Luukas, Extreme’s Regional Director Eastern Europe & Nordics, for a little pre-event chat to talk about AI, pushing the envelope in networking and the way Finns celebrate success.
What are you excited about the most? What do you think will make this year’s event stand out from the previous ones?
This is Extreme Networks’ flagship, annual user conference. Every single year, Extreme Connect is the top notch, top tier event that disrupts the networking industry and makes waves around the globe. Each time there is something to be excited about. However, this year promises to be particularly amazing.
Following the event’s tagline, “Where it all comes together”, we are going to focus on our recent product announcement: Extreme Platform ONE. This groundbreaking technology platform radically simplifies the customer experience and reduces the complexity for enterprises by seamlessly integrating networking, security and AI solutions. At Connect, we’ll be able to share our vision with every single attendee in the room, and watching it spread and resonate is what excites me the most, personally!
How do you see AI shaping the future of enterprise connectivity?
Surely, there has been a lot of hype around AI in recent years. Personally, I truly believe it will change the networking game. There have been a lot of studies and industry thought leaders emphasizing that businesses investing in artificial intelligence are more likely to stay competitive and thrive in the market, while those that lag behind may risk losing their competitive edge.
Considering the growing complexity of IT environments and the talent gap that continues to widen as technology advances, I think that the same applies to enterprise networks. Organizations that don't utilize the latest and greatest AI-powered networking technologies will struggle to maintain their infrastructure and support modern applications and devices. Or, if we are talking about systems integrators, they will fall behind the curve. So far, AI has primarily been used to accelerate existing processes – improving efficiency through tools like chatbots and analytics. However, the real opportunity lies in replacing outdated workflows and creating entirely new capabilities. Imagine AI not just assisting but autonomously predicting failures and optimizing network performance in real-time, without human intervention. As AI becomes more autonomous, its potential to drive innovation and productivity will be essential for staying ahead in this rapidly evolving field.
What makes Extreme’s proposition unique in this regard? What impact from the Extreme Platform ONE solution do you expect to see on customers in Scandinavia?
Our job at Extreme is to help our customers seamlessly and securely connect people, devices, applications — essentially, everything they rely on to operate. To that end, we are not only combining networking, security and AI into one, elegant, and easy-to-navigate solution — we are delivering a comprehensive AI experience with generative, predictive features, all unified on a single platform that spans the entire network, including wireless, wired, and SD-WAN. Network management is also more streamlined, and the solution delivers enhanced value with more predictable costs and radically simplified licensing. Customers can take advantage of a recurring payment model that helps reduce the total cost of ownership, offering a more efficient alternative to managing multiple disparate point solutions.
One of the key aspects of the Extreme Connect events is networking with other professionals. How does the event foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing among IT leaders, partners, and customers?
If you think about how strong Extreme’s position is in Northern Europe, we are literally everywhere. We are serving entire nations: a variety of ministries, smart cities, hospitals, health regions. We are powering critical parts of the global supply chain, including harbors, airports and railways. We are supporting a number of manufacturing companies, retail and grocery chains, and logistics companies who work in between, delivering all those products to each other. We are powering global financial institutions, making money transfers happen all over the world and Europe every single day. Whatever you can imagine, we are doing it.
The reason I mention this is because every once in a while, I like to challenge our customers by asking them to imagine a day when all of their products and services are powered by Extreme Networks alone. And most of the time, the feedback is positive. And that’s what makes Extreme Connect such a great community-building event: whatever industry you are in, whoever you deal with on a daily basis, you are guaranteed to meet your peers, discuss common challenges, share experiences and best practices, and build valuable connections that actually translate into better outcomes for your organization.
This won't be your first Extreme Connect conference, but it will be the first time you've attended in your current position of Regional Director Eastern Europe & Nordics. What’s one thing you personally hope to take away from Extreme Connect 2025?
My personal wish is to thank all our customers for the great relationship that we have, and raise a glass with everybody with a hearty Kippis!, meaning “cheers” in Finnish. I’ve also come to truly appreciate how naturally these connections form, almost on their own. All it takes is bringing our customers together in the same room and joining the conversation — that's the best type of mingling.
Extreme Connect is where it all comes together, and I'm excited to once again bring together this incredible community!
Join us at Extreme Connect 2025!
