VMware Beats Cisco for SDN Revenue, IHS Markit Says

VMware ranked No. 1 in terms of SDN revenue during the second half of 2018 narrowly outselling rival Cisco in the space, according to IHS Markit.The firm puts VMware in first place with 22% of in-use SDN revenue and Cisco in second with 19%. Arista ranked No. 3 with 15%, white box vendors came in fourth with 10%, and Huawei rounded out the top five with 8%.It also found SDN revenue increased by 34% in second half of 2018 compared to the first half and is expects the market to reach $20 billion by the end of 2023, up from $7 billion in 2018. This includes SDN in Ethernet switches, SDN controllers, SD-WAN appliances, and SD-WAN control and management software.For VMware and Cisco, this includes their respective NSX and ACI product lines. Over the past couple years both vendors acquired top SD-WAN companies — Cisco acquired Viptela and VMware acquired VeloCloud — and made other moves to allow them to stretch their networking fabrics from the data center to the cloud and edge. VMware calls this “NSX everywhere” and Cisco calls it “ACI anywhere.”