VVVMware edges Cisco for in-use SDN revenue in the second half of 2018—report

In the second half of 2018, VMware held a slight edge over Cisco for in-use enterprise software-defined networking market revenue. According to a report by IHS Markit, VMware held the top spot with 22% of in-use SDN revenue in the second half of 2018 while Cisco was second with 19%. Rounding out the top results, Arista Networks was third (15%) while white-box vendors came in fourth (10%) and Huawei was fifth (8%). Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and VMware NSX have long been combatants across the software-defined networking and virtualization sectors and now they are going head-to-head with their cloud, data-center and edge product positioning. In January, Cisco launched its ACI Anywhere update at Cisco Live in Barcelona. The following month, VMware counter-punched with a major upgrade to NSX, which included NSX-T Data Center 2.4 and NSX Cloud. After those updates and enhancements, IHS Markit said that both vendors were rewarded with an increase of production trials and live deployments with new enterprise customers.