Cisco scores big with router and LAN switch customers; Juniper is 2nd for routers, ProCurve is 2nd for switches

Infonetics: Two recent studies, one of enterprise router users, the other of LAN switch users, confirm that customers consider Cisco the top dog of the router and switch industry.

The studies validate a trend seen in previous years. When asked to rate manufacturers on a number of criteria, such as technology, roadmap, security, price-to-performance, pricing, and support, router and switch buyers consistently rate Cisco the highest. Cisco received especially strong marks for security, technology, financial stability, and service and support.

Router respondents rate Juniper second overall, giving them high marks for technology and product roadmap. Switch respondents rate ProCurve second and Dell third overall, giving each of them high marks for financial stability. Dell also scored well on pricing, and ProCurve scored well on support.

The only category in which the competition beat out Cisco was pricing, although Cisco still comes out on top for price-to-performance ratio, albeit by a small margin. In other words, customers may not like Cisco’s pricing, but they feel they get a good value for their money.

Based on the results of these studies, incumbent manufacturers are in a good position, since most companies will try to stick with their current vendor. Medium and large companies have big, complex networks, and they tend to employ a single vendor strategy and are reluctant to swap vendors. This bodes well for incumbents, but makes it hard for smaller vendors to expand their market share. However, there are areas that could cause buyers to defect, namely value and support, and vendors that are under-delivering in this area could be in for a rude awakening.

• The top emerging technology trend for enterprise routers continues to be the integration of security features like firewall, VPN, IDS, etc.

• The top emerging technology trends for LAN switches are 802.1x and VoIP support

• Buyers invest in emerging networking technology to make the network more secure, more reliable, and more efficient, which in turn should lower long-term operating costs

• Respondents plan to almost double the average number of 1G ports on their workgroup switches, and expect the number of 10G ports to increase another 42% over the next 2 years

• Cisco leads the list of installed router and LAN switch vendors by far, with 87% of router respondents and 68% of LAN switch respondents using Cisco products

• The gap between Cisco and the competition is wide: for installed router vendors, Nortel is second with 6%, and Juniper follows closely with 5%; for installed LAN switch vendors, 16% of respondents use 3Com, 15% use ProCurve (HP)

The studies, User Plans for Routers and User Plans for LAN Switches, Publ 20060919