Cisco, Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, and Huawei topped Gartner’s latest quad-box ranking of the market’s leading data center switching vendors, a market that like most is being heavily impacted by growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI).

Gartner placed those four vendors in the “leaders” quadrant of its latest “Magic Quadrant for Data Center Switching” ranking. Of the four, Arista showed the highest “ability to execute” mark, while Huawei was pinned to having the most “completeness of vision.”

Specifically, Arista’s judged 7000-series switches, EOS network operating system, and CloudVision management platform were touted as garnering “high satisfaction” from customers, sporting a “well-aligned” roadmap for upcoming high-performance fabrics, and Arista’s market agility.

Gartner did caution that Arista lags when it comes to non-English support programs, sports a “narrowly focused” sales and geographic strategy, and potentially limited growth opportunities that could be hampered by competition from its current technology partners.

Huawei’s completeness was based on its CloudEngine switches, Yunshan operating system, and iMaster NCE management platform. Those components were cited for their alignment with emerging enterprise needs, extensive performance capabilities, and a well-developed fabric management platform.

However, like most Huawei hardware and software, Gartner noted the China-based vendor has limited visibility into established markets in North America and Western Europe, its marketing efforts fall behind that of rivals, and the vendor has limited experience with the open source Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC) platform that is starting to gain traction.

Cisco is big; Juniper’s future is uncertain

Cisco’s ranking was based on its Nexus 9000-series switches, NX operating system, ACI-based fabrics, and its Nexus Dashboard. Gartner touted those components for their broad market support, its overall large customer and support base, and for Cisco’s roadmap to simplify an expanded service offering.

That last point could be critical as Gartner dinged Cisco for complexity and cost concerns, a lack of integration across its data center switching platforms, and its tardiness in announcing its 800 Gb/s capable switch support within the Nexus portfolio.

Juniper’s ranking is based on its deep product portfolio, which includes its QFX-, PTX-, and EX-series switches, Junos operating system, and Apstra management platform. Those products were cited for being “well aligned” with emerging enterprise needs, being backed by Juniper’s well-regarded support, and Apstra’s ability to support non-Juniper devices.

However, that Apstra platform was noted as incurring “high software licensing costs,” Juniper’s portfolio being more advanced that what smaller enterprises might require, and Gartner cited customer concerns over Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) pending (and challenged) $14 billion acquisition of Juniper and “the uncertainty it creates.”

That uncertainty has been noted by industry analysts.

“I’ve had customers put things on hold right now, and not just the Juniper side but both sides,” Andre Kindness, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said in an interview with SDxCentral about how Juniper and HPE customers are reacting to uncertainty around the deal. “Typically, if customers are strong enough to look outside of Cisco and they’re not a Cisco shop, then HPE, Aruba, Juniper are the primary ones that they’re looking at. I’ve had customers put some of that on hold at this point.”

For now, Gartner has HPE as a “challenger” in the latest ranking alongside rival Nvidia. Dell Technologies and Nokia were placed in the “visionaries” box; while H3C, Extreme Networks, and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise were labeled as “niche players.”

Data center switching market set to surge

Gartner in its report added that organizations continuing to use legacy data center switching equipment to support their new generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and AI workloads “will waste at least 30% of the processing capability.” This is set to drive growth across the data center switching market.

Dell’Oro Group is predicting the high-end router market will see a 4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years, hitting $12.7 billion in sales by 2029. The firm noted that growth will be driven by higher-speed routers designed to handle expected AI workloads.

“Our long-term view of the routing market remains positive, especially for high-end routers,” Dell’Oro Group VP Jimmy Yu wrote. “At the end of the day, bandwidth demand continues to increase. There are of course times when the market contracts when network supply exceeds current needs, like it did last year in 2024. But overall, demand for more bandwidth has always gone up and we do not see that changing any time soon. This brings greater need for denser, more efficient networks, especially routers that have 400 [Gb/s] and 800 [Gb/s] ports to fill the future bandwidth gap.”