A recent market report from Dell'Oro Group says the Ethernet switch market grew 8 percent sequentially in L2-L3 switching during the second quarter of 2011. The report attributes the growth to continued data center deployments including the use of 10-Gigabit Ethernet in top-of-rack and blade switches.
Dell'Oro's senior director of Ethernet switch market research Alan Weckel said, "The Ethernet switch market rebounded strongly in 2Q11 as fixed Ethernet switches reached record levels for both revenue and port shipments during the quarter. 10-Gigabit Ethernet continues to be the main driver of revenue growth in the market as customers continue significant investments in the data center. Despite strong sequential growth, we continue to expect overall market revenue to decline year-over-year in 2011."
The report, entitled Ethernet Switch Quarterly Report, says Dell, Enterasys, Extreme and Juniper all grew their fixed Ethernet switch revenue more than 20 percent sequentially. Growth in fixed Ethernet switching came from campus, carrier and data cente deployments. The top four fixed Ethernet switch vendors were Cisco, HP, Juniper and Dell. Cisco, HP, Huawei and Brocade topped modular Ethernet switch vendors for the quarter.