Forecast: Data center segment to drive 5-year Ethernet switch market

A new report by networking and telecommunications industries analyst Dell’Oro Group reveals that the Ethernet switch market continues to fragment, as the campus, data center, small-medium business (SMB) and Carrier Ethernet segments grow and contract in different ways.

“The Ethernet switch market continued to evolve rapidly in 2014, with vendors performing very differently in each segment of the market,” commented Alan Weckel, vice president of Ethernet Switch research at Dell’Oro Group.

He continued, “In looking to our forecast, we believe the demands of the cloud and higher speeds of Ethernet such as 25 Gbps, 50 Gbps, and 100 Gbps, will cause the vendor landscape in the data center market to change significantly. At the same time, we believe the campus market is about to go through a mini upgrade cycle to 2.5 Gbps and 5.0 Gbps to support higher speed WLAN access points,” added Weckel.

Dell’Oro Group’s Advanced Research Report: Ethernet Switch Deployment Location quantifies the four largest customer deployment location types. The report also includes market share analyses for 2011-2014, as well as a 5-year market forecast of the data center, enterprise, small and medium business (SMB), and Carrier Ethernet services segments.

According to the report, while Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard were already above five percent market share in the data center, both Arista and the white box/bare metal switching segment as a whole have joined them, by virtue of respective, greater-than-40 percent revenue growth posted by each in 2014. The new report estimates that white box/bare metal switching reached 7% of data center revenues in 2014.

Learn more about the report.