Alcatel-Lucent takes bite out of Cisco's SP edge router market share

During the calendar year-over-year third quarter, Cisco lost 4% of its SP edge router revenue market share while Alcatel-Lucent gained 4%, finally surpassing Juniper's market share.

By Brad Reese on Tue, 12/01/09 - 5:26am.

Networking and telecommunications industry market information gurus, The Dell’Oro Group, published its Routers Report 3Q09, which stated the following:

"Alcatel-Lucent reported strong performance in 3Q09. It was the only SP Edge Router vendor to record Q/Q and Y/Y increases. Despite the global recession, Alcatel-Lucent performed well during the first three quarters of 2009, increasing its year-to-date revenue share to 20%, well above its 15% share for full-year 2008. We attribute Alcatel-Lucent’s success to the following factors: expanding customer base, regional balance and broad product line."

Dell’Oro Group's 3Q09 vs. 3Q08 SP Edge Router Revenue Market Shares:

Vendor	3Q09 Revenue Market Share	3Q08 Revenue Market Share	Variance
Alcatel-Lucent	20%	16%	+4%
Cisco	45%	49%	-4%
Juniper	19%	19%	0%

Lindsay Newell - VP Marketing for Alcatel-Lucent IP activities gave his take on Alcatel-Lucent's revenue market share gain, "The Alcatel-Lucent Service Router portfolio has simultaneously intercepted the market for residential, business and mobile IP services.

"We were the first to introduce purpose-built edge routing equipment big enough to handle increasing bandwidth demands created by the emerging popularity of applications such as IPTV, video on demand, and Internet video; while being smart enough to properly arbitrate and effectively manage the different types of traffic that might be on a given subscriber connection – eg voice, video, high speed Internet.

"This same Service Router technology has also proven very effective in addressing requirements for the evolution of enterprise business services, and moving forward for the evolution of mobile transport networks.

"In contrast, competitors have historically relied on a strategy of moving routers originally designed for the core of router networks, to address the edge of the network once they were no longer ‘big enough’ for the core.

"However, the edge of the network has become too sophisticated for older core routers to properly address today’s requirements, providing Alcatel-Lucent an opportunity to gain a strong foothold in this market. Alcatel-Lucent's main router competitors have recently introduced new products to better address the edge router market, but as newer products, they still require significant investment to catch up to the breadth and depth of features available on Alcatel-Lucent's Service Router portfolio."

Cisco responds to the Dell’Oro Group Router Report 3Q09:

"We believe we are very strongly positioned with leading global service providers -- more than we have ever been -- both from a technology and a business partner perspective. Our new flagship edge routing platform, the Cisco ASR 9000, features industry leading capacity of 6.4 terabits per second and 400 Gbps per slot, and was designed to handle large growth in visual networking traffic and deliver a non-stop video experience to end-users. The platform has been endorsed by Deutsche Telekom and, as we’ve previously announced, has been deployed by several major service providers, including Verizon Wireless, Softbank, Telstra and Cogent. Just recently, Cisco introduced a new single-slot 16 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) line card, delivering up to 160 Gbps per slot, an industry first which helps enable the ASR 9000 platform to lead the industry in capacity, density and scalability. Additional background information regarding Cisco’s stance on the ASR 9000 edge routing platform can be found here."

According to Alcatel-Lucent:

"Alcatel-Lucent’s technology leadership has continued in 2009, with portfolio enhancements that position it for continued gains as the global economy recovers. Service routing innovations announced so far in 2009 include the industry’s first 100 Gigabit Ethernet service routing interface for the edge and metro, a converged IP/Optical backbone transformation solution that slashes CAPEX and OPEX in the network core, application-awareness for cloud-based Enterprise WAN services, a massively scalable wireless Internet gateway platform for the LTE evolved packet core and new service router platforms for smaller carriers and enterprise & vertical markets, further rounding out the portfolio and expanding Alcatel-Lucent’s addressable market."

A Clear Path to 100Gigabit Ethernet on the Alcatel-Lucent Service Router Portfolio:

What's your take, why do you think Alcatel-Lucent took a bite out of Cisco's SP edge router revenue market share?

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