The global Ethernet Switch market declined 12% sequentially in L2-L3 switching during the first quarter, a new report said.
The research report from Dell'Oro Group attributes the sequential decline to seasonal softness and Cisco’s fiscal second quarter being more heavily considered toward the first two months of the quarter than normal.
“The Ethernet Switch market is expected to decline in 2011 after record levels were achieved in 2010,” said Alan Weckel, director of Ethernet Switch market research at Dell’Oro Group. “With most segments expected to decline in 2011, 10 Gigabit Ethernet Top-of-Rack switches will be the strongest performing sector as servers are still in the initial stages of migrating from multiple Gigabit Ethernet connections to two 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections.”
The report also indicates that data center deployments, including utilizing 10 Gigabit Ethernet in Top-of-Rack, Blade switches, and Modular switches, will have the strongest growth in 2011. For Top-of-Rack, the top three vendors by revenue were Cisco, Arista, and IBM. For Blade Switches, the top three vendors were HP, IBM, and Cisco. For Modular, the top three vendors were Cisco, HP, and Brocade.