Cisco, Brocade and Juniper have topped Infonetics’ new enterprise networking vendor scorecard. Market research firm Infonetics Research released  excerpts from its 2013 Enterprise Networking and Communication Vendor Leadership Scorecard, which profiles, analyzes and ranks the leading vendors of enterprise networking, network security, and communication equipment and software worldwide.

(Advt.- Cisco® ONE: Cut Costs, Boost Agility)

“Cisco leads this field by a wide margin, claiming a perfect score in 6 out of the 7 criteria that we measure in our enterprise vendor scorecard. But the battle for 2nd place remains heavily contested, as witnessed by the tie this year between Brocade and Juniper”, said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research and lead author of the report.

“More than 100 vendors are vying for a piece of the $50 billion enterprise networking and communication infrastructure market, but only 8 have a diverse product offering and consistently capture more than 1% market share,” observes Matthias.  “Our enterprise scorecard helps buyers make accurate comparisons among vendors based on commonly-used purchase criteria and identify which vendors are most suitable for their organization’s specific requirements.“

The 8 vendors analyzed in the 25-page report include Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Brocade, Cisco, HP, Juniper, NEC and Siemens Enterprise.

(Advt.- Cisco® ONE: Traffic Visualization and Control)

The only report of its kind, Infonetics’ enterprise networking vendor scorecard evaluates datacom vendors on criteria using actual data and metrics, such as direct feedback from buyers, vendor market share, share momentum, financials and solution portfolio. This approach eliminates subjective scoring and ensures vendors are assessed accurately and fairly.

Aside from Cisco, for the most part vendor scores fall into a narrow range; a notable exception is financial stability, where there is significant variability in scores.

Brocade strongly improved its ranking this year due to improvements in financials, market share momentum and buyer perception.

Juniper maintained its score from last year, as improvements in solution breadth and buyer perception were offset by weaker financials.

(Advt.- Cisco® ONE: The Value of Advanced Flow Control)

HP ranks 2nd in 5 out of 7 criteria but slid into 4th place overall due to slowing market share momentum and weakening financials.

The core business of the other 4 vendors analyzed in the report — Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, NEC and Siemens Enterprise — revolves around the PBX market, which has been slow to recover from the recession, limiting their financial stability and growth prospects.

That said, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya and Siemens offer some of the most extensive product portfolios, and NEC’s early work on software-defined networking (SDN) could bring up its technology innovation scores next year.

Whitepaper 1 :- Advanced Flow Control

Whitepaper 2 :- Traffic Virtualization and Control