Ethernet switch market posts record 2012

According to a recent report by market research firm Dell'Oro Group, the Layer 2-3 Ethernet switch market reached $21 billion in 2012. Almost all of the market's growth came from data center network deployments, as spending in campus networks reportedly remained weak for most vendors. In looking forward to 2013, the technology researcher expects the market to grow robustly with strong gains coming from the data center; however, it does not expect sales of modular switches will improve significantly.

"Ethernet switch market revenues in 2012 achieved a new record at $21 billion -- however, weak spending by the US government, as well as a customer preference change, caused modular switching to contract in 2012," noted Alan Weckel, vice president at Dell'Oro Group.

More: Data center, campus technology transitions expected to drive Ethernet switch market

Weckel continues, "We expected a shift towards fixed [switching] as improved stacking and resiliency in fixed switching helped campus deployments make the shift away from modular, but we believe the lack of spending by the US government, which typically purchases modular, was an additional pressure that caused the 2012 weakness."

Dell'Oro's report also shows that fixed top-of-rack (purpose built) 10 Gigabit Ethernet revenues grew over 50% in 2012, with strong demand from both enterprise data center, and especially service provider cloud customers. Vendors with current Ethernet Switch offerings in this segment include Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, Avaya, Brocade, Cisco, Dell, Enterasys, Extreme, HP, IBM, and Juniper Networks.

Dell'Oro Group's Ethernet Switch Quarterly Report offers a complete overview of the Ethernet Switch industry with tables covering manufacturers' revenue, average selling prices, and port/unit shipments (Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 40 Gigabit Ethernet, 100 Gigabit Ethernet) for Layers 2-3 (both managed and unmanaged).

Related: Report sees 'aggressive' price decline in 10G Ethernet switches