Extreme Networks announced Thursday an agreement to buy competitor Enterasys Networks for US$180m in cash.

Both companies sell switches and routers for a number of applications, including data centers. The move is about combining the two companies' product portfolio to cover a broader range of the networking-gear spectrum, according to a statement from an analyst included in the announcement of the deal.

“The combination of Extreme Networks and Enterasys is significant in that it brings together two companies with distinct strengths addressing the key areas of the network, from unified wired and wireless edge, to the enterprise core, to the data center and cloud,” Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst and president of ZK Research, said. “With an open software approach, the companies can drive product innovations and customers will benefit from their increased resources and larger scale.”

The combined company's revenue will be about double each single company's annual sales, according to Extreme. The company also expects larger scale to result in greater investment in R&D and synergies to eventually lead to greater margins.

Salem, New Hampshire-based Enterasys has about 900 employees and $330m in annual revenue.

San Jose, California-based Extreme pledged to continue supporting both companies' product road maps to protect current customers' investment and shield customer businesses from any acquisition-related disruption.

Extreme expects to extend its ExtremeXOS network operating system to incorporate additional features available in the Enterasys operating system and support both companies' hardware platforms within about two years.

Chuck Berger, president and CEO of Extreme, said, “Since its first release in 2004, ExtremeXOS has been developed with a Linux abstraction layer that makes it relatively easy to extend ExtremeXOS to support other vendors' switching hardware. Combining Enterasys technologies and products, including their Coreflow modular switches, IdentiFi wireless and the NetSight system management application, will extend and complement our product offering, which we expect will provide significant added value to the current customers of both Extreme and Enterasys.”