Looking at the enterprise router segment, Dinsdale noted that Cisco is it; everyone else is relatively very small. Cisco’s dominance also extends into the Ethernet switch space, though it is facing increasing competition. Cisco’s share of enterprise switches varies quite a bit quarter by quarter but is usually in the 40-48% range, he says.
“Arista has grown rapidly over the last few years and is now the clear number two in the market– and it is growing quite a bit more rapidly that Cisco,” Dinsdale said. “Next biggest players in the market are Huawei and HPE. Other big vendors include H3C, Juniper, Extreme and white box vendors.”
The overall market in 2024 was a bit challenging for a number of reasons. Dinsdale noted that there were global supply chain issues, then sales leapt as they suddenly caught up with the backlog, and then sales dropped sharply as customers were ingesting large volumes of shipments.
“We are expecting the market to bounce back quite a bit in 2025 after the lows in 2024,” Dinsdale said.
2025 looks strong for enterprise switches, not so much for routers
2025 is looking to be a solid year of growth for multiple segments of the switch and router networking markets.
Brandon Butler, senior research manager, enterprise networks, at IDC told Network World that his firm’s non-data center (campus and branch) Ethernet switch market forecast for 2025 is for revenues to reach $21.4 billion, which is expected to be a 6.0% gain over 2024. The data center ethernet switch forecast is also robust with 2025 revenue projected to come in 11% higher than 2024, up to $22.7 billion.
