Estimates from Synergy Research show spending is relatively stable
Despite more and more companies outsourcing workloads to the public cloud, legacy technology stalwarts Cisco and HPE remain the most popular enterprise infrastructure vendors, new estimates from Synergy Research suggest.
Synergy tracked enterprise infrastructure spending across seven categories for the 12 months leading up to the end of Q3 2016: Data center servers; switches & routers; network security; voice systems, WLAN; UC Apps and telepresence. In aggregate it estimates revenues were $88 billion across these segments, with spending down about 1% from the same time period in 2015.
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Data center servers is the largest portion of this market, but it is shedding share – down almost 5% in 2016 – as cloud computing vendors pick up steam. Switches & routers is the second largest segment, and it saw a minor 1% uptick. Synergy notes that WLAN grew the most while voice and telepresence both declined, Synergy says because of aggressive price competition and “market disruption.”
Cisco is the leading vendor in six of the seven categories (all but data center servers). HPE leads in data center servers and is second in WLAN and switches & routers, which makes it Cisco’s biggest competitor, according to Synergy. Dell EMC placed second in data center servers while Avaya placed well in enterprise voice systems; Juniper in network security; Microsoft in UC apps and Polycom in telepresence.
“Cisco continues to control a third of the enterprise infrastructure market and remains in a league of its own despite a variety of challenges,” said Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke. “HPE is the only broad-based competitor to challenge Cisco’s dominance though it does not compete in all of the major segments. The main disruption to the market is being provided by the growth of cloud and hosted solutions, which are redefining markets and enabling new competitors to emerge.”
