Looking at the leaders in individual SDN categories, the IHS Infonetics study also reveals that: white box switch vendors, as a group, are ranked #1 in bare metal switch revenue; Dell owns 100 percent of branded bare metal switch revenue; and that HP has the largest share of SDN-capable (in-use and not-in-use) branded Ethernet switch ports. (“Bare metal” refers to switches for which the software and hardware are sold separately, i.e., a customer can buy just the “bare metal.” With such switches, the end-user is free to load an operating system of their choice.)
The research tracks and forecasts SDN controllers and Ethernet switches in-use for SDN separately from not-in-use SDN-capable Ethernet switches. SDN in-use physical Ethernet switches are forecast by IHS to make up 15 percent of Ethernet switch market revenue in 2017, up from 4 percent today. Meanwhile, in-use virtual switch (vSwitch) ports are expected to make up 11 percent of SDN (in-use and not-in-use) ports shipped by the end of 2015.
“The data center and enterprise LAN SDN market will be solidified by the end of 2016, as lab trials give way to live production deployments,” concludes Grossner. “And in 2017, SDN will move from early adopters into the hands of mainstream buyers.”
Vendors tracked by the report include Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, Big Switch, Brocade, Centec, Cisco, Cumulus, Dell, Extreme, HP, Huawei, Juniper, Lenovo, Midokura, NEC, Pica8, Plexxi, PLUMgrid, VMware, White Box. The report is part of IHS Infonetics’ “Data Center Networks Intelligence Service.”
