Cisco continued to hold down the top spot for data center switch revenue, but white box vendors, Arista and H3C gained market share in the third quarter compared to the previous Q3, according to a report by Dell'Oro Group.
For the second straight quarter, Cisco led in 100 Gbps revenue, while Arista continued to lead in shipments. Also of note, Juniper and Arista started to report early 400 Gbps shipments, according to Dell'Oro Group's "Ethernet Switch – Data Center Quarterly Report." Google accounted for most of the 400 Gbps deployments in the third quarter.
RELATED: 400G shipments to surpass 15M switch ports by 2023; 100G close to its peak
During their recent earnings report, Cisco, Arista and Juniper executives said they were banking on more 400G deployments next year with hyperscale cloud providers, which would provide a much-needed bump to their bottom lines going forward.
RELATED: Arista's stock stumbles on lower Q4 guidance due to softening of business from a cloud 'titan'
During Arista's third quarter earnings call last month, Arista CEO Jayshree Ullal that her company's customers had pushed out their purchases of 400G gear to the second half of next year, with mainstream production starting in 2021.
Overall, spending on data center switches increased 2% year-over-year, the slowest growth recorded in five years, according to Dell'Oro Group.
“Although spending from some Tier 1 cloud providers such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft accelerated during the quarter, softer demand across the broader market of Tier 2 cloud providers and some large enterprises suppressed market growth,” said Sameh Boujelbene, senior director at Dell’Oro Group, in a statement. “We expect softness in the data center switch market to persist through the end of the year, and into the first half of next year, due in part to delays in the 400 Gbps refresh cycle. Spending on data center switches is expected to improve in the second half of 2020."