CEOs Discuss the Networking Equipment Market: Extreme, F5 Neworks, Avaya

Interesting quotes from CEOs and CFOs on recent earnings conference calls, discussing their companies and markets:

Extreme Networks CEO Mark A. Canepa

This quarter, revenue increased modestly. Revenue for the quarter was $86.9 million, consisting of $71.1 million in product revenue and $15.8 million in service revenue. Product revenue increased 4% sequentially and decreased 8% year over year.

Service revenues were flat sequentially and comparable to the year-ago quarter. The split of enterprise sales and service provider sales was 73% to 27%, a one percentage point shift toward service provider business this quarter.

Revenues in our European operation experienced good overall growth, both sequentially and year over year, while revenue in the United States declined compared to prior periods.

See the full Extreme Networks conference call transcript.

F5 Networks CEO John McAdam

I was very pleased with our start to fiscal year 2007. In Q1, we saw a solid sequential revenue growth in our three main product lines -- Application Traffic Management, Security and WAN optimization. Our core market, the Application Delivery Controller market continues to be very robust and represented approximately 90% of the quarterly revenue. From a geographic perspective, the America's led the way with a solid 15% sequential increase in revenue. EMEA also delivers sequential increase in revenue. Japan and APAC were down slightly from the previous quarter, though we expect to see a continuation of sequential growth in this coming quarter from Japan and APAC...

As far as the Q2 outlook is concerned, Andy indicated that we continue to see sequential growth in our business. The overall prospect pipeline remains very strong and each geography is forecasting sequential growth with Japan forecasting the strongest growth given the fact that is -- this is the financial yearend. Growth forecasting in Americas and APAC is more modest in line with typical seasonality. Included in the Americas forecast is the federal business, which we do expect to be down sequentially similar to last year. We also expect to see continued growth in our services business. As I stated in the last quarter’s conference call, we believe our core market in application delivery networking is very robust and currently has a number of growth drivers that should maintain growth opportunities throughout 2007. Trends such as data center consolidation, virtualization and service-oriented architectures in the enterprise, combined with the increased traffic with video, mobile and Voice over IP traffic in the service provider segment, all contribute to growth opportunities for our application delivery networking solutions. For that reason, we remain committed to our growth strategy and as Andy earlier, we're planning to add between 100 to 120 new members to the F5 team during this current quarter...

See the full F5 Networks conference call transcript.

Avaya CEO Lou D'Ambrosio

I have spoken to you over the past several months about our Intelligent Communications vision. Simply, Intelligent Communications is about embedding communications solutions into the fabric of our customers' business processes. And helping them transform their business models, grow their revenues, improve their productivity, increase their profits. This strategy provides a communication platform that enables Avaya, our partners, and independent software vendors to innovate and build new communications enabled applications.

For our company, our customers, and our shareholders, this roadmap moves us up the value chain, to higher-value software and solution offers. It enables us to achieve strategic differentiation in the highest value, most profitable market segment.

As I mentioned, investing in key technologies is fundamental to our strategy, and this includes supporting internal R&D activities, as well as selectively allocating capital to acquisitions that enhance our vision.

See the full Avaya conference call transcript.