The AI-powered network holds the key to combatting business complexity
Productivity meets AI power
In today’s fast-paced digital world, the network is mission-critical infrastructure. It’s not just a technical backbone – it’s the central nervous system making it possible for hospitals to deliver modernised care, it’s crucial to how retail organisations drive point of sale solutions and real-time inventory management and how schools deliver digital learning initiatives, security cameras across cameras and student communication and more. Across industries, the network is the connective tissue between all parts of an organisation.
Additionally, more devices, applications, and users have made managing the network more complex than ever. Teams are constantly asked to do more with less – manage performance, maintain security, adopt emerging technology, and adapt to constant change. Running a business’ IT operations can feel like solving a 1,000-piece puzzle while the pieces keep moving.
It may seem like there’s no easy solution, but there is a key to eliminating complexity across all parts of the organisation: but AI is about to change that. Not just AIOps where an alarm is triggered and a flaw is remediated, but truly integrated conversational, multimodel and agentic AI – integrated into every layer of the network.
The AI-Powered Network
The status quo in IT has been relying on point solutions to address specific needs. A VPN for security, an AI app for productivity, cloud storage for company data, a management tool for network troubleshooting, a separate system for logging trouble tickets, and an additional separate repository for technical documentation.
Unfortunately, all these point solutions are hard to manage. And as the numbers of users, devices, and applications continue to grow, having everything in a separate place means that, should something fail or disrupt network connectivity, IT is spending hours trying to figure out what’s going on and how to fix it. That means hours of productivity lost for the organisation, which results in millions lost revenue.
This is where the AI-powered network comes in. AI-powered networks are managed through a single, unified platform, where everything – AI, security, and network solutions – are brought together in one place. This isn’t just a technological shift, it’s a strategic imperative that enables growth without overwhelming IT. When networking, AI, and security work together, the network evolves from a support function to a driver of innovation.
With AI embedded into the network, IT teams have a team member that never signs off. It can automate traffic monitoring and anomaly detection, optimise bandwidth usage, and make recommendations to improve network performance and eliminate inefficiencies. For users and IT teams, this means minimised downtime, faster threat detection and response, and overall improved network performance. Because the network touches everything, it also holds the key to making every process within an organisation a little easier, better, smarter, faster.
Consider a hospital: if there’s a problem with a network-connected device, like a heart monitor in the ICU, an AI-powered network can detect the problem before connectivity is lost, alert an IT administrator, and recommend a fix. That administrator can even authorise an AI agent to automatically resolve the issue should it happen again; patient care is not compromised. Or consider a grocery store: network-connected sensors in refrigerators can detect changes in temperature, and an AI-powered network can send an alert to all cross-functional team members to fix the freezer or go move the goods, preventing thousands in lost inventory. In a manufacturing facility, problems with connected machinery can cost millions – but with an AI-powered network monitoring every device and automatically detecting and resolving problems, operations can continue 24/7. This is just a fraction of how impactful AI will be in this next generation of networking.
Luckily for today’s organisations, an AI-powered network managed in a single platform isn’t a hypothetical solution. Extreme Platform ONE is the industry’s only all-in-one networking platform to integrate conversational, multimodal, and agentic AI. Rather than relying on a patchwork of disconnected systems, IT teams can manage networking, AI and security together in one cohesive place.
This means that when something happens on the network, not only can IT teams immediately see the impacted users, devices and applications, they can see exactly how to fix it and even automate a response for future cases – with a human in the loop. Extreme Platform ONE turns hours into minutes and minutes into seconds – so organisations can move faster, operate more efficiently, and scale to keep pace with customer demand.
Smart, scalable, secure
As technology becomes more intertwined with business strategy, IT teams are experiencing a clear change in focus. Once seen mainly as a support function, IT is now driving innovation and shaping broader strategy. Leaning into AI can help make that happen at scale. But AI must be integrated into the process, not bolted on.
This is another strong argument for a unified platform. Organisations that want to grow and use new innovative technologies to do so will be able to function more easily in a unified environment, and with greater visibility and control over the network, IT teams can roll out new tools without worrying about interrupting daily operations. And as IT becomes more integral to the organisation, Extreme Platform ONE delivers cross-team AI-assisted workflows with hyper-personalised experiences for every role, from network operators and procurement teams to executives.
As an organisation grows, procurement teams can even upload new building plans into the platform and see exactly what they need to extend the network, from access points and switches to new licenses. Extreme’s advisory AI agent validates access requests, suggests optimal group and policy use, and offers real-time setup guidance, replacing dozens of manual steps and ensuring consistent, streamlined security.
To stay competitive in today’s rapidly changing landscape, organisations must recognise the power of a unified, platformised, AI-powered network. The shift is already underway, and organisations that are investing in solutions like Extreme Platform ONE are the ones poised for future success. By integrating insights and aligning AI initiatives with strategic goals, organisations across industries can unlock efficiencies, deliver smarter outcomes, and maintain their competitive edge in the market.