The worldwide market for Carrier Ethernet equipment increased 100% year-over-year and more than 25% sequentially, according to Synergy Research Group’s “Q2 2006 Enterprise and Service Provider Router/Switch Market Shares” report. Carriers are driving this growth with their rollout of high-bandwidth services like IPTV, voice over IP (VoIP), and virtual private LAN (VLAN).
Cisco, Alcatel, and Juniper experienced the most significant growth in the second quarter, each exhibiting Carrier Ethernet sales increases in the triple digits. Smaller vendors, including Foundry, Extreme, and F5, also are enjoying a boost in sales, penetrating a market that historically has been dominated by a few router vendors.
“The edge has become a strategic platform for the delivery of advanced IP-based services,” explains analyst Mark Glodowski. “Carriers are investing heavily to deploy a slate of next-generation entertainment and communications services, including IPTV, VoIP, and HSI [high-speed Internet]. This is good news for networking vendors and great news for customers,” he contends.
Synergy Research Group’s quarterly router segmentation report was recently enhanced to include two new Carrier Ethernet segments as well as a redefinition of the service provider edge, embracing both Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching technologies. For additional details about the report, visit www.srgresearch.com.