2014 Review Shows Enterprise Spending Flat; Wide Variances by Segment

RENO, NV, December 19, 2014

New Q3 data from Synergy Research Group shows that across seven key enterprise infrastructure market segments, vendor revenues for the last four quarters declined, but by less than 1% on an annualized basis. Aggregate revenues for the last four quarters reached over $79 billion, while revenue in each of the last eight quarters has typically been in the $19-$21 billion rage. Data center servers comprise by far the largest segment of the market and revenues here declined by almost 3%. Ethernet switches are the second-largest segment and they experienced growth of 3%. WLAN grew the most while the enterprise voice market remains in the doldrums and telepresence continues to suffer due to ongoing aggressive price competition. Cisco is the market leader in six of the seven segments with the exception being data center servers, where it is ranked fourth. In aggregate across the seven segments Cisco’s market share over the last four quarters was 32%, virtually the same as in the preceding four quarters. HP is the leader in data center servers and is the number two ranked vendor in both Ethernet switching and routers. Its aggregated market share is 17%. The number two ranked vendors in the other segments are Avaya (enterprise voice systems), Microsoft (UC applications), Aruba (WLAN) and Polycom (telepresence). Vendors who have been achieving steady market share growth in these highly competitive markets include Microsoft (UC applications and enterprise voice), Arista Networks (Ethernet switching), Mitel (enterprise voice) and Cisco (servers),

“Clearly Cisco remains in a league of its own, gaining market share in the only segment where it is not the current leader,” said Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst Jeremy Duke. “In these hardware-oriented product areas HP is the only broad-based challenger to Cisco’s dominance. However, with the advent and strong growth of cloud and collaborative software solutions, competition is now coming from non-traditional areas and we will see many market boundaries continue to blur.”