Here is our ranking of the top 10 network equipment vendors serving enterprise needs.
This is Network World’s take on the most powerful enterprise networking companies; the information is based on our own research, consultations with trusted industry analysts, and the work of our in-house journalists. For our purposes, we primarily define “power” as market share in enterprise networking areas—specifically data networking, monitoring and management, and WLAN—although we also consider their technological foundations and key market factors.
1. Cisco.
Cisco remains the largest player in enterprise networking. The company offers a one-stop shop for almost anything you might need for your network and ensures that its products work well together.
Their products may not be compatible with equipment from other brands, and their prices can sometimes be daunting, but Cisco continues to have a strong and reliable technological foundation and remains the company to beat in the world’s most important networking sectors.
In early 2017, Cisco won a legal battle with its rival Arista over a patent lawsuit. Furthermore, Cisco holds 60% of the routing and switching market, according to the most recent IDC figures.
Cisco faces challenges on many fronts, some of which are addressed more effectively by other networking specialists. But no one can claim to offer the same breadth of solutions as Cisco, and the future remains quite bright for the company.
2. HPE / Aruba.
Aruba is the largest company other than Cisco in the wireless LAN market and the only other company listed in the “Leaders” quadrant of Gartner Research’s latest Magic Quadrant report for wired and wireless LAN infrastructure.
Aruba, acquired by HP months before the company split into two entities in late 2015, is now the wireless arm of HPE; former CEO Dominic Orr joked that Aruba actually acquired HP Networking, not the other way around. It accounts for 20% of the global wireless revenue share, according to Gartner.
Recently, Aruba has been focusing on the core switching market, launching new hardware to complement its ArubaOS-CX operating system, which offers an “all-in-one” solution for visibility and management of an increasingly dense IoT network.
The foray into the switch market could radically affect Aruba’s trajectory, although its position in the WLAN market is unlikely to change as a result. However, recent news from IDC that the company’s market share declined in its latest quarterly report—during a period when the global WLAN market was growing—may be cause for some concern.
3. Juniper.
Juniper is a long-standing competitor and one of the big names in the data center networking sector. Its data center solutions are well-integrated, well-built, and generally well-designed—in fact, better than Cisco’s, as they are compatible with many third-party products.
Juniper was quicker to adopt mesh networks and other next-generation network topologies than its competitors, and the company’s software is particularly well-regarded, leaning toward open frameworks that integrate seamlessly with other parts of the network.
The company hired a new CTO, former Googler Bikash Kolay, and announced that it had exceeded its profit targets for the second quarter of this year.
The company lost a small amount of market share in 2016, according to IDC, but its trajectory appears to be on the right track, and analysts believe Juniper is well-positioned to succeed in the evolving enterprise networking market.
4. Huawei.
Huawei operates in many segments of the enterprise networking market, ranging from core networking to WLAN/WAN. The company’s presence in the United States has been somewhat limited due to security concerns regarding its products and its relationship with the Chinese government, but such restrictions do not exist in many other countries and markets around the world.
In short, Huawei is aiming to become the “Chinese Cisco.” The company ranks second behind Cisco and HPE/Aruba in the WLAN market. So it certainly appears to be on the right track.
Huawei’s share of the WLAN market grew by 77% between 2015 and 2016, according to the latest available figures from IDC.
It’s hard to name a company that’s rising as rapidly as Huawei across critical segments of the enterprise networking market. Huawei’s struggles to penetrate the lucrative U.S. market won’t go away, but given its success rate elsewhere, it may not matter much.
5. Arista.
Arista is tightly focused on data center networking and is one of the world’s best companies in this sector. It is the only company to share the “Leaders” quadrant with Cisco and Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for core routing and switching.
Arista’s latest releases—the new hardware (merchant silicon!) in its R series and software updates—have been hailed as among the most capable on the market.
IDC reports that the company has been growing rapidly, posting 33% growth in the networking market throughout 2016.
Arista’s outlook depends heavily on the eventual outcome of its legal battle with Cisco. As we mentioned, the company has been growing like wildfire lately, but setbacks in court will likely slow that down significantly.
6. VMware.
Why they’re here: Two main reasons. For one thing, there’s a strong case to be made that VMware’s virtualization and cloud products are the most important in the industry, and that the company—owned by Dell/EMC since late 2016—is among the most influential in the enterprise networking sector.
However, with its NSX network virtualization product, VMware is also a driving force and disruptor in software-defined networking. Compatible with most major hardware brands, NSX allows users to manage multiple cloud environments from a single console.
7. Riverbed.
Thanks in part to a series of acquisitions and mergers over the years, Riverbed dominates key areas of networking—specifically, secondary networking, WAN optimization, and application performance management.
Recently, it has focused on integrating a diverse set of management and visibility tools into a cohesive suite and expanding those capabilities beyond just a set of auxiliary networking tools.
8. NetScout.
NetScout is a network performance monitoring and diagnostics company with a significant presence in the enterprise and service provider segments. It is still undergoing some consolidation, following the 2015 agreement with Fluke Networks, Arbor Networks, and VSS Monitoring in a complex merger.
The company has a strong presence in the network performance monitoring and diagnostics (NPMD) market and is a leading provider to data centers. It is one of the three leaders in the NPMD Magic Quadrant, which it joined before Gartner, despite its demand. They are networking professionals capable of performing root-cause analysis across multiple parts of the infrastructure and quickly reviewing historical data to identify issues.
9. Extreme Networks.
The name makes it sound like a company that sells energy drinks, but Extreme Networks is a company with an impressively comprehensive portfolio of enterprise networking offerings.
After purchasing Broadcom’s Brocade data center business, absorbing Avaya’s networking business, and acquiring Zebra Technologies’ LAN business in 2016, Extreme’s existing switching and routing solutions now form the foundation of a surprising up-and-comer in the enterprise networking sector.
10. Dell/EMC.
It’s a bit strange to refer to Dell—one of the most recognizable tech brands in the United States—as an outsider, but here we are. Unusually for such a long-established company, Dell is recognized as a “visionary” in data center networking according to Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” report.
Its enterprise hardware may not have the same reputation as some of its competitors, but the fact that it can run a wide range of different software means there is great flexibility and a strong value proposition for users seeking virtualized networking technologies. This is a strong point for a company that technically owns VMware, although VMware continues to operate with a high degree of independence.
