The battle for SD-WAN supremacy remains fierce among vendors with VMware, Cisco and Fortinet holding down the top-three spots in Q3 market share. At various times this year, Cisco and VMware have both claimed to be the top SD-WAN vendor.
According to a report by Dell'Oro Group, the top-five Q3rankings also include, in order, Versa Networks and Silver Peak, the latter of which was bought by HPE earlier this year for $925 million.
RELATED: COVID-19 supply chain issues put damper on SD-WAN sector in Q1
In its first quarter report earlier this year, Dell'Oro ranked Cisco first followed, respectively, by VMware, Silver Peak, Versa Networks and Fortinet. In Q1, the SD-WAN market grew by 24% year-over-year but was well off the 64% annual growth for last year largely due to supply chain issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.
For the first nine months of 2020, the SD-WAN market grew by more than 20% compared to the prior year, according to Dell'Oro's third quarter report.
"Demand for SD-WAN is holding up well in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially when compared to hardware-based networking technologies such as access routers," said Dell'Oro Group Vice President Shin Umeda, in a statement. "Demand for enterprise networking gear has stabilized from the first half of the year, and we see this as a precursor to the SD-WAN market acceleration that we are forecasting for next year."
According to the third quarter 2020 Router and Carrier Ethernet Switch (CES) report, the service provider router and CES switch market grew for the second consecutive quarter.
The adoption of 400 Gbps technologies and IP transport for 5G remained tepid in Q3 due in part to trial and evaluation delays by service providers related to the Covid-19 pandemic.