Case could be made for adding WAN optimizers to list
Granted, it could have included companies like F5 and Riverbed. And some of you probably think it should.
But our list of Cisco’s Top 10 Rivals are all equally deserving of the recognition. Just ask Cisco…
In routing, there’s Juniper, of course, and Alcatel-Lucent. Juniper stole one-third of Cisco’s market share in core routing since entering the scene in 1997. And Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper combined own about 40% of the edge router market, compared to Cisco’s 43%. Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper usually swap the No. 2 position a few times over a year or two.
In switching, there’s HP. Granted, Cisco owns 72% of the Ethernet switch market. But HP boosted its No. 2 position to 10% by buying 3Com. In addition to boosting its share, 3Com broadens HP’s switching arsenal with a core enterprise/data center system and gives the company new vigor with which to attempt to steal Cisco share and propagate its lower TCO message. It also gives HP some platforms with which to replace Cisco switches in its data centers.
In data center, there’s HP, IBM and Brocade. Cisco took the fight to the former two by entering their sacrosanct server market; it also faced off with Brocade by entering the FibreChannel SAN market in 2002. Cisco’s got some momentum going in servers – its Unified Computing System has 1,700 customers 18 months after shipping. In SANs, momentum is uneven: Cisco’s share in modular SAN switches is down to 43.5% in Q2 from about 50% in Q1; but Q2 share is up from from the 36.3% a year ago, according to Dell’Oro. Brocade is at 56.3% share in Q2, down from the 63.4% share it had a year ago.
Unified communications sees Cisco going head-to-head against Avaya and Microsoft. Avaya is a pure play in UC, and the market leader in enterprise telephony. The battle there will be intense with No. 2 Cisco. Avaya recently countered Cisco’s Cius collaboration tablet with its own Flare. Microsoft and Cisco have a flint-and-steel relationship in which they both cooperate and compete in UC – like the friction in a “can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em” arrangement.
Other rivals in other markets are Polycom in videoconferencing; Aruba in wireless LANs; and CheckPoint in security, joining Juniper. If the list went to 11 or 12, it would include F5 and Riverbed whose WAN optimization products give Cisco’s WAAS fits in the market.
Anyway, there’s one or two that we missed. Are there any others?
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