Switch sales get Nexus boost

Cisco leads the way as datacentre switch sales power up 16 per cent sequentially in Q1

Cisco grew datacentre sales by 23.5 per cent quarter on quarter

Strong sales of Cisco’s new Nexus switches drove solid growth in the datacentre switch market in the first quarter of 2010.

According to Infonetics Research, the global datacentre Ethernet switch market powered up 16 per cent sequentially to $1.16bn (£788m) in Q1.

This is on the heels of a very strong Q4, the market watcher said.

Market gorilla Cisco was the “driving force” behind the strong quarter after growing Ethernet datacentre revenues by 23.5 per cent sequentially.

Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data, said purpose-built switch sales grew 30 per cent sequentially thanks to Nexus.

“Healthy annual growth is expected to continue in this segment because these switches better address the requirements of the next-generation datacentre, including LAN/SAN convergence, reliability and high performance,” he added.

After a turbulent 2009, the application delivery controller (ADC) segment returned to growth with global sales up 28 per cent year on year in Q1, Infonetics said.

F5 Networks continued to lead the way and now has a near 20-point lead over Cisco in the ADC segment after the two were neck and neck in 2007 and 2008.

However, the WAN optimisation segment struggled, with Blue Coat the only top vendor to show growth.