2013/12/25 Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei named top router/switch vendors by carriers in latest Infonetics survey

Campbell, CALIFORNIA, December 23, 2013—Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2013 Router and Switch Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey, which explores service providers' perceptions of edge router and carrier Ethernet switch (CES) manufacturers and their criteria for choosing vendors.

“The top four vendors in global edge router and carrier Ethernet switch market share—Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent, and Huawei—are likewise viewed as the leading manufacturers of edge routers and CES by service providers participating in Infonetics’ just-published router/switch survey,” notes Michael Howard, Infonetics Research’s co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks. “There’s a big gap between these four and their competitors, and it just gets harder for any manufacturer who’s not already on top of the heap.”

• Cisco, the long-term edge router/CES revenue market share leader, is also seen as the #1 edge router/CES manufacturer by operator respondents
• Carriers are looking for the best investment: Survey respondents ranked price-to-performance ratio the #1 criterion when selecting an edge router/CES vendor, followed by product reliability
• Surprisingly, financial stability was rated the least important selection criterion on average
• When it comes to service provider familiarity with edge router/CES manufacturers, Tellabs and Brocade scored relatively high given their market share