Ethernet switch market surges back to record levels

Dell'Oro Group reports that the Ethernet switch market achieved record revenue and port shipments in 2010, largely on the strength of data center expansion activity.

March 2, 2011

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The Ethernet switch market achieved record revenue and port shipments in 2010, with revenue growing 30 percent year-over-year to nearly $20 billion in L2-L3 switching, reports market research firm Dell'Oro Group.

“The Ethernet switch market surged in 2010 as enterprise and small businesses rebounded from economic weakness in 2009 and the data center continued to expand rapidly,” said Alan Weckel, director of Ethernet Switch Market Research at Dell'Oro.

According to the research, Juniper had the strongest year-over-year growth, followed by Dell, Cisco, and then HP.

“Given the strength and record levels achieved in 2010, we believe that the overall Ethernet Switch market will remain flat in 2011, as growth in the data center will be offset by price erosion and increased competition for enterprise and small business spending,” added Weckel.

Dell'Oro forecasts that while 1 Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet both grew in 2010, most of the future market growth will come from 10 Gigabit Ethernet, particularly from data center deployments, including Top-of-Rack, Blade switches, and Modular switches. The top six vendors in 10 Gigabit Ethernet in 2010 included Brocade, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, and Juniper.