Routers and switches dip globally: The service provider router and switch market saw a 5 percent drop in Q3 compared to Q2 2012, Infonetics Research reports. "The performance of the router/switch market roughly reflects economic conditions, and true to form economic weakness in Europe, North America, and Latin America drove down IP router and switch revenue in the third quarter," said Michael Howard, Infonetics co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks. "EMEA posted another negative quarter amid the ongoing fiscal crisis in Europe, and we may not see much of the usual final quarter budget flush, as it seems just as the European Commission gets closer to economic steadiness, more negative reports arrive." Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) maintained its lead in the router-only segment (IP edge and core routers), while Juniper (NYSE: JNPR) retook the second spot followed by Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and Huawei. News release
Cloud comes into its own in 2013: Next year will see healthy growth in IT spending of more than $2.1 trillion, a rise of 5.7 percent from 2012, IDC predicts, with mobile devices driving the trend. And as the call for packaged applications increases, cloud services will "be a powerful contributor to industry developments in 2013 with the merger & acquisition (M&A) activity of the past 20 months actually accelerating." Over the next 20 months, some $25 billion in acquisitions could take place, the market intelligence firm predicts. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Oracle will likely battle Salesforce.com and Workday for the lead position in major SaaS segments. News release
Ukraine joins the data center march: More than 24 companies are currently providing data center services in Ukraine, driving a UAH 105 million (USD 12.8 million) market, according to a Research and Markets report. Colocation services generated UAH 50 million (USD 6.1 million) of those revenues. And there's still room for growth. "Despite some market saturation of the services offerings, currently the market of data center services is segmented enough" and competition is not too high, according to the research firm. Total data center utilization in the Ukraine in the first quarter of 2012 was less than 50 percent. News release