Continued digital transformation and increased cloud services adoption drove good levels of growth in sales of network switches, routers, security gateways and high-end Wi-Fi equipment in the second quarter of the year, according to IDC. The move to higher speeds across the network saw multi-gigabit sales rise more than 40%.
► Switch sales up 14% with multi-gigabit sales up 41%
► Security appliance sales up 10% in EMEA
► Enterprise wireless up 20%
Switches grew 14.6% and generated sales of at $8.5 billion. Revenues from router sales to enterprises and service providers were up 6.3 % to $4.2 billion. Security appliances were up 5.7% year over year, generating over $4.9 billion – and EMEA saw particularly strong growth here with sales up 10%. While the total revenues generated by enterprise wireless LAN sales were smaller at $2.1 billion, this sector of the market grew by 20.4% year over year in Q2.
IDC said that the Ethernet switch market maintained strong growth due to datacentres, hyperscalers and other cloud service providers adding devices to keep pace with demand. In the campus, growth has been sustained by enterprises pursuing digital transformation. Sales of 2.5/5GbE multi-gigabit switches rose 41.2% year on year.
‘What's impressive is that this growth is occurring in the face of headwinds occasioned by supply-chain disruptions, rising inflation, and the ongoing war in Ukraine,’ said Brad Casemore, research vice president, cloud and datacenter networks at IDC. ‘The resilience of the Ethernet switch market's growth rates in recent quarters shows the importance of connectivity and digital infrastructure in today's digital-first business world.’
Subscription services are helping drive growth of network security appliances as organisations adapt to hybrid working. Upgrades to Wi-Fi 6 – and increasingly to Wi-Fi 6E – fuelled growth in wireless sales.
