Vyatta, a major player in open networking and network virtualization, reportedly has joined Extreme Networks’ Go Purple Partner Program.

'We are pleased to work with Vyatta (News - Alert) through our Go Purple Partnership Program to ensure interoperability and scalability with Vyatta's routing, firewall and VPN solutions,' said Dick O'Hara, director of strategic alliances for Extreme Networks (News - Alert), in a statement.

O'Hara said that the joint customers can deploy network infrastructures with interoperability confidence and receive the benefit of the enhanced performance the solution offers.

'Joining Extreme Networks Go Purple Partner program makes it easier for our customers to deploy end-to-end open network solutions in enterprise and service provider sites requiring high reliability, high availability and high performance,' said Tom McCafferty, director of marketing at Vyatta.

McCafferty said that the relationship is another important step in making affordable, open networking a viable alternative for data centers of every size.

Extreme Networks provides converged Ethernet networks that support data, voice and video for enterprises and service providers.

The company says that its network solutions feature high performance and high availability switching that deliver insight and control enabling customers to solve their real-world business communications challenges.

Recently Extreme Networks had announced that Kingsborough Community College (KCC) of New York has selected it as the network vendor of choice based on its solution scalability, its demonstrated open standards approach to technology and its common software architecture across its network switches delivered with its ExtremeXOS operating system.

Kingsborough College, located in Brooklyn and supporting 20,000 students, required an upgrade of its Gigabit Ethernet backbone to high performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet network, in addition to replacing a mix of network equipment it had installed with a more streamlined, powerful and consistent LAN solution.

KCC's primary goal was to realize an immediate return for its technology investment through a solid and resilient network that would support any service or learning application thrown at it.