Gartner reveals its 'Magic Quadrant' for campus LANs

Industry analyst firm Gartner last week released its 'Magic Quadrant' analysis of the market for campus LAN equipment, singling out Cisco, HP ProCurve and Foundry Networks.

In the first update to the campus LAN report since October 2006, Gartner says that Cisco remains the leader, but that "cracks are showing," and those are opening up opportunities for HP ProCurve and Foundry.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant reports are badges of honor for those who do well on them. In their essence, they boil down to one graph, with two axes: "ability to execute" and "completeness of vision." Vendors are placed on the graph depending on those two factors - so up and to the right is the place to be, because that means you are strong in both areas.

Cisco is further up and to the right than any other company, but HP is right there. And Foundry is inside the Magic Quadrant by the skin of its teeth (you can see the graph on its Web site). 

Listed as strong in "completeness of vision" are Nortel, Extreme Networks and Enterasys Networks, and Enterasys was happy enough with that designation to issue its own press release.

Meanwhile, bringing up the rear were 3Com, Force10 Networks and Alcatel-Lucent, relegated by Gartner to the status of "niche players" because of their lack of vision and inability to execute.

Some of the criteria that Gartner looked at included whether they supported convergence applications in an open, standards-based way, whether they embedded security in the LAN infrastructure, and whether they supported large data centers.

If you are really interested in details, Gartner offers the report for purchase here, under "Campus LAN (Global)."